


Witness Marks

by gaelicspirit



Series: The Scars Series [1]
Category: Magnum P.I. (TV 2018)
Genre: Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Brotherhood, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Rick is a good friend, Search and Rescue, Thomas has many layers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-08
Updated: 2019-12-08
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:08:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 52,598
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21716632
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gaelicspirit/pseuds/gaelicspirit
Summary: Set after Episode 1x09,Ties That Bind. For Thomas Magnum, compartmentalizing traumatic events keeps him steady. Until he’s forced to recall the worst moments of his life in order to help a kidnap victim. After that, memories become harder to sequester into the nice, safe boxes in his mind. And when a seemingly-routine case turns sideways, putting Magnum—and everyone he cares about—in the sites of a killer, those memories may be the difference between life and death.
Series: The Scars Series [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1718065
Comments: 120
Kudos: 162





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> **Disclaimer/Warning** : Nothing you recognize is mine. Including the odd movie line. I like to work in quotes now and again. And…the characters swear in my hands. Quite a bit, actually. Lastly, don’t try any of the medical stuff in this story at home, kids. Most of it I learned from TV and movies, so.
> 
> Title is in reference to repair marks on antique clocks. Basically, scars on the gears of the clock that tell the story of what it had been through over the years. Chapter openings are lyrics from songs that I have playing on my writing playlist.
> 
>  **Author’s Note:** Okay, confession time (this is kind of a long note, just a word of warning). 
> 
> For those of you familiar with my name, this is for you. For those of you who've never read any of my stories before, you can scroll down to the 'Important Point', below. 
> 
> I was planning to take a bit of a hiatus from writing fanfic to focus my energy on my original fic and seeing if I could make a legitimate go of this writing thing. But then, my world was shifted back in June when I lost a sister and I haven’t really found my balance yet. 
> 
> I really wanted to write a story—and I’d been playing with this idea set within the reboot of Magnum, P.I. The ‘80’s version of the show had always been a favorite of my childhood, something I shared with my dad, and I found myself romanced by the changes Lenkov made to the characters and their background. Season 1 is more my speed than Season 2 has been so far—and the characters I’ve put on paper here won’t fit in the S2 framework of the show. But it’s still fun to watch. 
> 
> Anyway, I worried I was going backwards, somehow, if I allowed myself this release of storytelling in this genre. Then, I got an email from a friend, K. Hanna Korossy, who said, “…please allow yourself to enjoy the pleasure and comfort of fanfic writing…writing should be food for the soul, because it’s not worth the sweat and tears otherwise.” 
> 
> She’s right. I love writing these stories. I love sharing them with you. I love seeing what you like, what resonates, what entertains. I love all of it. So, while I’m not giving up on my original fic, I’m going to allow myself to sink into fanfic and see what the world of this Magnum, P.I. reboot has to offer us.
> 
>  **Important Point:** I’ve been _heavily_ influenced by **IceQueen1** ’s (or **disappearinginq** on tumblr) vision of the boys’ time in the POW camp (see her amazing WIP, “Wrong Side of Heaven”). If something seems familiar, it’s probably because you read it there, first. Many thanks to you, my friend, for allowing me to share your sandbox—and for not only giving this a sanity check but also cheer-leading me along to finishing and posting it.
> 
> With that, I give you my first attempt at a Magnum fanfic. I hope you all enjoy.

Here stands a man at the bottom of a hole he’s made  
Still sweating from the rush, his body tense, his hands, they shake  
Oh this, this is a mad war…  
\- _The War_ , SYML

**

_Thomas_

It was late enough he knew the dogs would be sleeping peacefully in the main house with Higgins. He cannily avoided the security lights and cameras—a simple enough exercise as he’d placed each one personally. No need to alert or alarm anyone inside the main house.

He left the Ferrari parked outside the gate. Higgins was going to have a field day when she saw it—but that was a battle for a later time, with caffeine on board.

Lots and lots of caffeine.

Stumbling a bit as he crossed the threshold between the lanai and the living room, Thomas checked the face of his watch, narrowing his eyes to focus on the semi-illuminated hands. It had been his father’s watch—one of the only things he owned that belonged to the man. It would probably make sense to upgrade at some point to something he could easily see in the dark—especially considering how much of his professional life was spent in the shadows—but he couldn’t bring himself to part with it.

Somehow wearing it felt as though his father was still with him, and there were more moments in his life than he’d care to recount where that sensation was the only thing that kept him grounded long enough to survive to the next moment.

Blinking hard, he focused: three a.m. Not a decent time for man or beast.

“Or hyper-vigilant, British ex-intelligence agents,” he muttered to himself, wincing as the whisper pulled at his dry throat.

He was a mess; this last job had required a bit more stealth and physicality than usual. He’d completed the task and would thankfully be paid—this time with none of his friends adding skin in the game—but he was wrung out.

Standing in the living area of Robin Masters’ guest house, Thomas looked from the couch to his bedroom and back, his vision wavering with exhaustion. He hadn’t slept in over forty-eight hours, hadn’t been back at Robin’s estate in nearly seventy-two. There would be questions to answer and excuses to give, but at the moment he was having a really difficult time keeping his vision from tunneling.

He pulled in a slow breath, noting with some consternation that the muscles along his ribcage whimpered in retaliation. He needed a shower, some food, and a lot of sleep—in that order.

Taking a step forward, he realized with sudden and alarming clarity that his body wasn’t going to cooperate with his agenda. His knees seemed to evaporate beneath him, and he reached clumsily for the couch, narrowly missing the coffee table as he hit the ground between the two. A part of his mind admonished him for not being able to muscle through to even just get off the floor—he was a Navy SEAL, for Christ’s sake.

But the other part of his mind—the louder part—told him to just stay down. Stay still. Let the darkness win.

He listened to the second part.

* * *

_Juliet_

She absolutely was _not_ monitoring the security cameras watching for his return. That might indicate she was worried—and she was most definitely _not_ worried. She was simply ensuring the safety of the estate.

It was her responsibility to keep everything running smoothly—and if that meant checking up on wayward security consultants who apparently felt it necessary to disappear completely for three days without a word, well, then. So be it.

“Come on, lads,” Juliet muttered to the two alert Dobermans flanking her and walked out into the perfect Hawaiian morning.

Trade winds picked up her short, blonde curls and tossed them across her face as she made her way to the exterior pergola where she enjoyed her morning yoga. Her eyes skimmed the waterline, hoping to see the tell-tale sign of that blasted Tigers ball cap and an outrigger cutting through the surf. The sea was an inviting, brilliant, turquoise blue…and utterly devoid of watercraft.

“Enough,” she scolded herself. “Acting like a bloody idiot,” she unfurled her mat. “He is a grown man, quite capable of getting out of whatever trouble he’s in on his own.”

As she stretched to plank position, it wasn’t lost on her that a week ago she would have been celebrating having three Magnum-free days on the property. But since observing how he helped Amanda Sato cope with the after-effects of being kidnapped and hearing him open up to the young girl about his time held prisoner in the Korengal Valley, something had shifted within Juliet.

She stretched up, elongating her spine, a frown pulling her brows low as she thought about Magnum teasing Amanda via Facetime as she, Magnum, and Rick cut their way through the leeward side of the island in search of where she’d been kept prisoner. The smile Magnum had tossed over his shoulder at them, turning his face into nothing but lashes and laugh lines, was entirely incongruous to Rick’s reveal of his time as a prisoner.

The man was still insufferable, but…there was something else there. Something she wasn’t quite yet willing to pin down with a label.

_“When we were there, they liked to put Thomas in solitary confinement for long stretches…we didn’t know if he was dead or alive.”_

Rick’s words ghosted through her memory as she stretched and balanced, working to empty her mind of disarming grins and lost expressions in dark brown eyes. So focused was she on centering her thoughts, it took her a moment to register the sound of Zeus and Apollo growling over the steady rhythm of the surf.

Rising to her knees, she looked in the direction the dogs were staring: the front gate.

“What is it, lads?” she asked, uncoiling and stepping down from the raised platform. She rested a hand on Apollo’s head, and felt the shift in his attention as he glanced from the front gate up to her, then back again. “Right, then. Let’s see what the fuss is, shall we?”

With the dogs leading the way, Juliet marched to the front gate, a sense of uncertain anxiety curling around itself in her belly. She hadn’t been truly _afraid_ in some time—but there was a sense of vulnerability about being alone on such an expansive estate that kept her alert, at the ready. She would never admit out loud—and certainly never to the man in question—but there was a sense of peace that came over the place when Magnum was around.

As former MI6—and a functioning adult—she was quite capable of managing the responsibility of maintaining Robin Masters’ estate entirely on her own. She had quite vehemently resisted the concept of a security consultant—live-in, no less. Thomas Magnum’s skill set was, in Juliet Higgins’ mind, rather superfluous. But then…she started to realize as she’d grown accustomed to his presence, his purpose became secondary.

Reaching the gate, Juliet felt her brows automatically fold over the bridge of her nose. It appeared Mr. Masters’ Ferrari was parked at the side of the road, just outside the gate.

“What the actual hell, Magnum?” Juliet grumbled, punching the code into the keypad just inside the gate and swinging through the opening, closing it behind her so that the dogs didn’t escape.

It was indeed Robin’s Ferrari, though it looked as though someone had taken it on an off-roading excursion. Mud splattered both sides and up into the interior, caking the wheel wells so much it was amazing the car had made it this far. A cursory exam didn’t reveal any body damage—to the car, at least. When she peered inside, she saw blood and what looked to be grease paint smeared on the steering wheel and edges of the driver’s seat.

“Was he drunk?” she wondered aloud, anger turning her voice to steel.

How dare he take such advantage of their employer’s possessions? Magnum had absolutely zero appreciation for the allowances offered him—and to leave a $300,000 automobile in such condition on the bloody side of the road—

“It’s unconscionable,” she snapped to the air. She climbed inside, kneeling on the driver’s seat and searching the back and beneath the seats for any evidence of what had transpired. “If I find one shred of alcohol…or a woman’s undergarments, or anything else…unseemly…I will take him apart.”

Continuing to mutter threats and words of warning, Juliet finished her search of the vehicle, finding nothing other than the mud, blood, and grease paint, of all things, to give her an idea of what Magnum had been up to. He’d apparently taken the keys with him, as well.

“Which means, he’s somewhere in that bloody guest house,” she said, with a pointed look at the dogs. “You’re faster than me. Go find him,” she jerked her chin forward, punching in the code once more to let herself back onto the grounds as the dogs took off toward the guest house.

As Juliet made her way behind them, each step added to her ire. The worst part was, she was just starting to see the man as an actual human being. A colleague, perhaps. Someone who could be leaned on, trusted, maybe even valued as a friend.

“Handle with care, indeed,” she muttered to herself as she crossed the close-cut grass from the entry lane toward the guest house. What could Mr. Masters have possibly been referring to when he offered those words of advice prior to Magnum moving in? The man was a child, a playboy, who valued nothing as much as himself.

Juliet was a reasonable person and a highly trained operative; she understood when emotions were high, they over road logic in most situations, and she was usually able to siphon her own emotions away to focus on action and reality. On some level, she knew that the anger she was allowing herself to build toward Magnum was fueled by a sense of worry she wasn’t interested in exploring quite yet.

But she chose to turn a blind eye to that level. It felt better to be angry with him than worried for him. Anger, she could handle; she had no idea how to process worry.

She halted her heated advance when she saw the dogs had stopped just inside the lanai, not entering the opened doorway toward the living area. That was odd. Why weren’t they intent on invading Magnum’s privacy, as per usual?

“Lads, come,” she ordered, pointing to her side. They instantly obeyed and parked themselves on the grass outside of the guest house. “Stay,” she held up the flat of her hand, and they both sat, eyes on her.

Moving cautiously forward, Juliet made her way across the lanai then into the living area, eyes scanning the full room. It took her a moment to see Magnum’s muddy shoe canted to the side on the ground between the couch and the coffee table.

“Oh, for God’s sake, Magnum, really,” she huffed, moving toward him, intending to jostle the man awake. She pushed the coffee table to the side and reached for his shoulder, pulling up short when she saw his profile.

Shades of green and black grease paint covered his face and neck in camouflaged patterns. A cut had been opened above his eyebrow; blood having dried there to seal the wound. A black, long-sleeved shirt was twisted around him, as though his sleep had been anything but restful.

“Well, that explains the grease paint,” she sighed, reaching down to shake his shoulder. “Magnum, you idiot, wake—”

The abruptness of his shift between unconsciousness and awareness at her touch startled her into pulling her hand back. Every line of his body was taut, his eyes staring straight ahead. Instinctively, Juliet moved back, putting the coffee table between herself and the man on the floor.

“Magnum?”

He flattened a hand against the floor and with enviable precision, pressed up into a crouch, the caked mud on his shoes and legs cracking and sloughing to the floor in small tufts. Juliet caught her breath at the look on his face. Gone was the light-hearted, almost youthful light she so often interpreted as irresponsibility. Before her was the soldier she’d heard the others speak of.

This was the man who survived a POW camp.

“Magnum, are you with me?”

His eyes were on her, but they were so black she could tell he wasn’t seeing anything in front of him—certainly not anything _here_ , now. His right hand was curled tightly into a fist, his left pressed against the couch as a brace, and he stayed in a crouch, poised to spring toward a threat… _any_ threat.

Juliet’s pulse beat a heavy tempo at the base of her throat. She’d spent time in the field long enough to know the effects of PTSD, to know how _not_ to wake a soldier, how to be careful when a flashback was triggered. She’d ignored all of those, choosing instead to see Magnum as nothing more than the playboy he often portrayed when she knew…she _knew_ he’d survived more than any human should have to.

“Thomas, it’s Juliet,” she said slowly, pitching her voice low and soothing, not wanting to signal the two Dobermans waiting at the wings for a sign from her that all was not right. “You’re safe.”

Magnum’s eyes shifted quickly from Juliet’s figure to the open door, then back. She could see by his bearing that he was debating the likelihood of escape.

_Bugger it all, how would Rick and TC handle this?_

“Thomas, just…take it easy….”

Magnum pushed to his feet in one fluid motion and she saw the tremble of his arms, as though he were wrestling with both instincts to fight or run. She could see his pulse beat in his throat, but not the flex of his shoulders as he breathed. He was holding his breath, she realized, bracing himself.

She stretched out a hand to him. “Take a breath, Thomas,” she implored gently. She could hear a low growl of warning just outside and was a bit amazed that the dogs had held off approaching thus far. “You run, and you know damn well those dogs will chase you.”

At that, he blinked, a ragged breath pulled in as though he was surprised his lungs still worked. Grabbing onto that tactic, she pressed forward.

“They’re just outside—and they’re just looking for an excuse to add another of your shirts to their collection.”

Blinking again, Magnum swayed on his feet, his fist relaxing. Juliet stepped carefully forward, reaching out to balance him. She could feel the tremble of his muscles beneath her touch. The motion of his body pressed his weight into the hollow of her hand, and she flexed her fingers around his bicep, hoping it grounded him rather than alarmed him.

“Are you with me?” she asked again, watching as slow blinks became rapid and awareness returned to his gaze.

“Higgy?”

The break in his voice almost had her heart tripping over itself. _Almost_.

“There you are,” she allowed a small smile to relax her mouth. “I was beginning to think you actually wanted to see how far you could test my patience today.”

Magnum swallowed, his tongue darting out to wet dry lips, and he slid his gaze around the room as if just bringing it into focus.

“Test…?”

She didn’t like how dazed he still sounded; she wanted to make him sit down before he came apart in her hands, but she was a little afraid of forcing him into any action in that moment.

“The _mud_ , Magnum,” she over-exaggerated her displeasure, trying to bring him around. “It’s absolutely everywhere—not to mention the status of Mr. Masters’ Ferrari. It’s a disaster! And then I find you all made up as if you’re prepping for some sort of… _Rambo_ cos-play.”

He looked at her then, and she saw awareness take a front seat in his gaze once more.

“Cos-play?” His voice still broke slightly, but it now sounded less traumatized, more sleep rough. “How do you even know what that is?”

Gently pressing against his arm, Juliet used her posture and position to subtly encourage him to sit on the edge of the couch. “I _do_ read, you realize. And watch television. On occasion.”

Magnum sat, leaning his elbows on his knees and rubbed at his filthy, short hair with the edges of his fingers. He pulled his hands back, staring at them with confusion and disgust.

“Yes, you’re quite a sight, I’m afraid,” she huffed a sigh and made a bit of a show flopping to a seated position on the coffee table. “It’s going to take you some time to detail the Ferrari.”

Magnum was still staring at his hands. “I parked it outside the gate,” he said, swallowing hard.

She wondered how long it had been since he’d had anything to eat or drink. He looked gaunt beneath the grease paint—and his lips were so chapped they were cracking.

“Didn’t want you to see,” he finished, still not looking at her.

“Yes, well, bang-up job on that front,” she crossed her legs and clapped a hand on her knee to emphasize her point. He was still moving a bit too groggily for her liking. “The lads alerted me to it almost right away.”

Magnum glanced up at her. “The lads,” he repeated, then looked around the room and out toward the lanai. “Where are they?”

“Just outside. Waiting to see if you’re going to give them a morning run.”

He chuffed slightly, the side of his mouth tugging upward in an anemic impression of his usual grin—and in no way did that unclench something inside of her.

“Don’t know that I’m up for that just yet,” he confessed, finally starting to sound more like himself.

She frowned. “What _have_ you gotten yourself into this time, Magnum?”

He gingerly touched the cut above his eye. “Nothing I couldn’t get myself out of.”

She tilted her head in concession at that. He had, in point of fact, not once called on her for a ‘favor’ in the last three days. That in and of itself should have alerted her to something being amiss.

“And should I be worried about some rival gang member—or perhaps the _Predator_ —coming onto the estate looking for you?”

He raised an eyebrow, his eyes dancing slightly. “That’s two movie references inside of five minutes, Higgy. What’s gotten into you?”

She lifted a shoulder. “Perhaps it’s finding our security consultant passed out cold on the living room floor.”

He grimaced, looking at the floor. “Yeah, I’m…uh. I’m sorry about that.”

The quiet sat between them like a presence, heavy and dark. Waiting to pounce on the vulnerable gaps in their armor with malice. She saw him shudder slightly and yielded.

“You know, Magnum,” she said carefully. “There are people you can talk to, if you need to.”

“Rick and TC don’t need to know about this,” he said quickly, his words clipped as he rubbed his hands against the folds of his dirty cargo pants.

She looked down. “I wasn’t referring to Rick and TC,” she clarified. Though, she _would_ be calling them straight away after this.

“I’m fine,” Magnum said softly, look at her through his lashes. “You don’t need to worry about me.”

 _Like hell_.

“Oh, I’m not,” she was quick to assure him. “I’m worried about the estate. Can’t have our security consultant disappear without a word for three days, now can we?”

“I was on a job,” he defended.

She nodded. “Right, well, let’s hope the next one isn’t located in the middle of a mud pit.”

“I’ll wash the car,” he offered, rubbing at the back of his neck.

“I know you will,” she stood, not missing his flinch at her abrupt shift in position. “But not until you take a shower and get some food.”

“I’m fi—”

“Oh, do give the machismo a rest, will you?” She turned her back to him, offering him a moment to gather himself. “I’ll expect to see you with a bucket of suds in the lot before noon.”

She started to walk out toward the dogs.

“Uh, Higgy?”

She paused, looking over her shoulder at him and trying desperately not to see a lost boy in his expression.

“What time is it now?”

“It’s nine in the morning,” she revealed. She noted his look of surprise, then started forward once more.

“Juliet?”

Sighing, she turned back around. “What is it now, Magnum?”

“Thank you,” he said, his voice low and serious.

He held her eyes for several seconds before she tipped her chin down in an abbreviated nod. “You’re welcome, Thomas.”

With that, she gestured to the dogs, leading them away from the guest house with her. When she was certain she was out of earshot, she pulled out her cell phone and dialed Rick’s number.

“Rick? Hello, it’s Juliet. Yes, I believe it would be in your best interest to come to Mr. Master’s estate for lunch today….”

* * *

_Thomas_

He let the water beat down on the back of his neck, one hand pressed against the tiled wall of the shower, the other sluicing the water from his face and with it the blood, grease paint, and grime. He felt shaky, like he’d narrowly missed stepping on a land mine, or being hit by a car.

For several minutes, he simply focused on the immediate sensations wrapping around him: the smooth tile beneath his palms, the grouted edges at his fingertips, the textured no-slip flooring beneath his bare feet, the sound of the water splashing against the glass door as it tripped off of his skin.

Blowing out a breath, water dancing from his lips, he straightened slightly and raised his face to the rainfall of hot water.

He couldn’t even remember the dream, not clearly. It was now simply a jumble of images, sensations, voices and screams.

His, theirs, too many, too often.

It was about the Korengal. It was _always_ about the Korengal. But the only thing he could really pin down was Nuzo.

Sebastian Nuzo had been at his side since BUD/s, since they got their orders, since they met up with two Marines who became his brothers. Nuzo had pulled him out of more near misses than Thomas could really remember; the fact that the raucous Italian was gone left an imbalance in his life Thomas hadn’t quite figured out how to set right.

The best way—the _only_ way, really—he’d been able to keep moving forward after the pit-falls and bear traps life had seen fit to slip into his path was to put the ugly stuff, the scary stuff, the stuff that made him want to stop breathing because the mere act felt like knives in his chest, into a box inside his mind and close the lid.

Not thinking about something wasn’t the same as forgetting it.

He simply didn’t focus on it. When he lost his father as a kid, he focused instead on baseball. When he realized they’d been betrayed to the Taliban, he focused on escaping. When he learned his mother had died while he’d been a prisoner, he focused on moving to Hawaii with the guys.

It worked, for the most part. It kept him whole, kept him sane, kept him _present_.

Kept him light-hearted, unfettered in life. Able to do his job, be there for his guys, breathe in the morning and release the night.

However, his last two jobs seemed tailor-made to crushing the locks on those boxes inside of him and spilling out every dark, horrible memory until he was choking on them. With Amanda Sato, it had been a necessity—he knew that, he walked into it with open eyes. She needed a path to follow, someone to trust who had been through a similar trauma. Talking about the camp with her—even knowing Juliet heard—was important for her recovery.

He just hadn’t anticipated how painful it would be to expose that still-deep wound inside of him when those memories weren’t locked up quickly enough.

The mud and paint and blood washed down the drain in a swirl of green and gray, the scent of the soap and shampoo replacing the smell of jungle and dirt. Thomas leaned both hands against the tile and hung his head low, closing his eyes and simply breathing in the steam from the shower.

He’d taken this latest job with little research or regard to the specifics. He’d simply needed to move. To act. To be useful.

There were no memories to hash out, no recollection to wade through with this one. It had been a simple matter of discovering a mole in a prominent banking company; however, the only way to be certain he had the right man was to track his suspect through the rain forest, and around one of the volcanoes, without being seen.

Thomas was damn good at stealth when he wanted to be. Nuzo had taught him well, how to blend with the shadows, breathe with the night.

Which was another thing he hadn’t anticipated: slipping back into that skin rattled him.

All the times before, he’d been part of a team, had someone watching his back. Anchoring him. Pulling him from the edge. Doing so alone, without his Overwatch, without his friend…it cracked something inside of him.

Something that had been way too fragile to start with.

Turning off the water, Thomas stepped out of the shower and wiped a hand across the steam-clouded mirror. The cut above his eye had been reduced to a slim line of red, but his eyes looked sunken and bruised. Juliet had been right: he looked terrible.

“Nothing a hot meal and eight straight won’t cure, huh, Nuzo?” he murmured to his reflection.

A deep melancholy seemed to hollow out his chest as he stared at himself. Nobody was every really done living…life just sort of ends before everything is said, before life is put right. And everyone left behind has to just accept that and find a way to navigate a world so changed simply because one person once existed.

Sighing, Thomas filled the sink with water and reached for his razor; the dark scruff he kept trimmed around his chin had spread along his jaw line in the last three days. He shaved, examined the bruising long his ribs, assessing it to be survivable, and ignored the knotted scar on his flank left behind from the moment Nuzo saved his life with some gunpowder and a stolen lighter.

Stepping from his bathroom to the coolness of his bedroom, Thomas rolled his shoulders.

He needed to box this shit up, pull it inside, give himself room to believe the grin he shared with everyone else. He couldn’t afford to allow his old self to return, and he could feel it happening. A shell reconstructing in the face of a possible enemy.

Dressing in a T-shirt and shorts, he padded barefoot toward the kitchen, frowning when he heard voices slipping around the corner through the quiet of the house.

“I’m tellin’ you, man, you’re doing it wrong.”

“I’m doing it just fine; you need to relax.”

Thomas closed his eyes briefly with a helpless smile. He should have suspected she’d call them.

“I’m lookin’ at the cookbook right here, and it says two teaspoons salt for the dressing. _Two_. You put in like…four. At least.”

Thomas rounded the corner just as Rick drew his head back with a scoff. “TC, everyone knows cookbooks are more like…guidelines.”

“Uh, guys?” Thomas called as he approached his small kitchen. “The stove’s on fire.”

“Oh, shit!” TC exclaimed, turning quickly and whipping the towel off his shoulder to beat at the burgeoning flame until it was extinguished.

“Why’d you have the stove on?” Rick asked, look up at his taller friend. “We’re making a salad!”

“For the chicken!” TC protested. “Our boy needs protein, man!”

Thomas swung his leg over the nearest stool and sat down, feeling gravity pull on him more strongly than it had a week ago.

“Higgins called you, huh?”

Rick turned away from TC and his singed towel to regard Thomas with a seldom-seen solemn expression that made him look infinitely older than the rest of them. His blue eyes were sharp, seeing more than he ever gave away. Thomas found he couldn’t meet his friend’s gaze for long.

“ _You_ could have called, y’know,” Rick pointed out. “Before you looked like someone wrung you out and then rolled you in sand.”

“Yeah, man,” TC said, throwing his ruined towel in the garbage can at the side of the counter. “What’s going on with you?”

Thomas just shook his head, gratefully taking the glass of water Rick offered and downing the whole thing before he spoke. Moving with an almost choreographed grace, Rick handed Thomas’ empty glass to TC, who refilled it and handed it back to Thomas while Rick plated the chicken and salad they’d been putting together for him.

“Nothing,” Thomas replied, picking up his fork and cutting the chicken with the side of the utensil. “I just had a job.”

“A job,” Rick repeated in a dead-panned voice. “A job that takes you away for three days and returns you rough enough you pass out on your living room floor, then wake up to flashback city.”

“Jesus, she didn’t waste any time,” Thomas muttered. “She tell you about the car, too?”

“Thomas,” Rick sighed, leaning his elbows on the counter so that his face was close enough avoiding his gaze meant simply not looking up at all. Thomas kept eating. “This isn’t about Higgins, and you know it.”

“You’ve been off for a while,” TC commented.

“Oh, and you’re just a perfectly balanced picture of sunshine,” Thomas countered, intentionally mean.

Rick straightened at that, putting himself between Thomas and TC. “None of us are, you know that,” he countered, “but you’re usually the one….”

“One what?” Thomas challenged, pushing back the empty plate.

Too much salt or no, the food had been damn good. And as soon as they were done hashing out his latest mistakes, he’d make sure to let them know.

Rick pulled the empty plate toward him and put more chicken on it, shoving it back in front of Thomas as though they weren’t cleaving open a box full of secrets and threatening to spill them all over the floor of the guest house.

“The one holding it all together, man,” TC completed. “You’re our glue, T.M. Always have been.”

Thomas finished the second helping of chicken, shaking his head. “You got that wrong. It was never me. It was Nuzo.”

At the mention of their lost friend, Rick took a step back, bumping against TC’s larger frame.

“And there it is,” he said quietly.

Thomas frowned, finishing a third glass of water. “What is?”

Rick moved around the counter to stand in the open doorway between the living area and the lanai.

“You can’t let go of Nuzo,” Rick said, his back to the both.

Thomas looked over at TC with a scoff, but it swept from his face as TC leveled a heavy gaze on him, his dark eyes serious. He frowned back at the big man, then looked toward Rick’s back.

“What, and you can?”

“It’s different, Thomas,” Rick half turned, his profile toward them, but not yet looking his way. “You take it all on—just like back in the Valley. You pull it in like you caused it, like you could have stopped it,” he turned the rest of the way, facing Thomas, his blue eyes bright in the dimly lit room, “and it happened to you just like it happened to us.”

Thomas was shaking his head before Rick stopped speaking. “Not exactly….”

Rick advanced so quickly, Thomas flinched. It was easy to forget how dangerous Rick could be; most saw only the floppy blond hair, the bright blue eyes, the crazy outfits and tendency to be the life of the party. But the man was lethal, and Thomas felt his entire being tense in an automatic response at his approach.

As though sensing Thomas was still straddling a very thin line of control, Rick pulled himself up short, staring at his friend.

“It _happened_ to you, Thomas. You didn’t kill Nuzo any more than you got us captured.”

Thomas looked down, then away. They didn’t get it—they couldn’t. They didn’t want to see that he was at fault, because if they did, they’d have to accept their friend—their _brother_ —was the cause of all their pain, of the worst moments of their lives.

And he knew these men—they wouldn’t be able to live with that.

He took a slow breath. “Look, I get that you’re concerned,” he lifted his eyes, forcing himself to meet Rick’s gaze. “But I’m okay.”

“Brother,” TC interjected from behind him, “you’re so far away from okay, you’ll need to jump through hyperspace to get back there.”

Thomas glanced at him. “Maybe so, but…unless you got a Millennium Falcon back in your hanger, we’re just going to have to go with my version of the story.”

Rick huffed, dropping down onto the couch, a small cloud of dust wafting up around him from where Thomas sat earlier, and propped his feet up on the coffee table.

“You know what Robin always says,” he shrugged, stretching his arms across the back of the couch. “Never let the truth get in the way of a good story.”

Thomas looked away. He loved these guys, he really did. They were his constant, his true north, his gravity. And it was because he loved them that he couldn’t let them see his darkness. They’d seen too much already in those eighteen months in the Korengal. They’d seen him come close to breaking, as close as he’d ever been or, God willing, would ever be again.

Even losing Nuzo hadn’t taken him that close to the edge, to the end. And it should have.

It really should have.

“So, what, we’re not going to get any tea?”

Thomas pulled his eyebrows close, looking confusedly over at Rick, then back at TC. “ _Tea_?”

“Yeah, y’know, the scoop, the dirt, all the gossip,” Rick rotated his wrist, his hand splayed as if to say _and so on_. “It’s what the kids are calling it these days, Thomas. You gotta keep up.”

Thomas grinned, rotating on his stool to face the living room as TC moved around the counter to perch on the arm of the couch.

“Is that right?”

“He has to keep up with the lingo, so he knows what the girls he dates are talking about,” TC grinned.

“Hey, now,” Rick protested good-naturedly. “Okay, so it’s a little true. But they keep me young.”

Thomas chuckled shaking his head. “What _tea_ are you looking for?”

“Whatever you got into that had Higgins talking about Rambo,” Rick elaborated, then tilted his head. “Although I don’t think I can put _quite_ the level of distain on the word she did.”

Thomas laughed. “Yeah, I doubt it.”

He planted himself on the easy chair across from them, allowing his spine to curve into the cushion and his head to drop back against the edge. His body _ached_. He felt every one of his thirty-six years. And then some. Both of his friends were looking at him expectantly, so he gave in, recalling the case and his method of tracking the mole as though telling them about a television show he watched the other day.

“So, wait…are you saying you didn’t climb outta the jungle for _two days_?” TC broke in at one point.

Thomas shook his head. “I couldn’t break cover and risk them seeing me.”

Rick’s eyebrows went up. “No wonder you’ve just downed about a gallon of water since we’ve been here.”

“And ate half a chicken,” TC chimed in.

“And what’s with the…,” Rick gestured to his own eyebrow, indicating the cut above Thomas’ eye. “You wrestle with a monkey out there in the jungle?”

Thomas winced. He wasn’t looking forward to their reaction to this one.

“Would you believe a wild boar?”

Rick stared at him, a lag to his facial expression as though he was cycling through options and trying to find one to fit the moment. He did that often, Thomas realized. Finding subtle ways to blend in like a chameleon, supporting a protective coloration to hide in plain sight—seen while unseen.

He finally landed on incredulous.

“You… _fought_ …a boar?”

Thomas lifted a shoulder. “Well, fight is a strong word,” he amended. “I kinda…ran from one.”

“Into a tree?” TC asked, eyes on his cut.

“More like,” he winced pressing a hand to his bruised ribs, “down a hill and, uh…across some rocks. And stuff.”

“And stuff.” Rick shook his head. “So, let me guess…concussion, which would explain you passing out and probably helped trigger whatever happened when you woke up.”

“Looks like sore ribs, too,” TC observed.

Thomas nodded, shifting unsteadily in his chair.

“Why you keep doin’ this to yourself, man?” TC asked, sounding almost disappointed in him.

Thomas looked over, puzzled. “What do you mean? I’m just doing my job, TC.”

TC frowned, looking an awful lot like a disapproving older brother who’d just caught him sneaking out of school. “Your _job_ doesn’t require you pushing yourself so hard you forget where you are,” TC countered. “Your _job_ doesn’t mean you end up looking like you just got rolled for your last dollar.”

Thomas simply stared at the other man, trying to find an equitable comeback.

“What our big friend is trying to say,” Rick interjected, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, his eyes up on Magnum, “is that you matter, Tommy. And you need to start remembering that. Nuzo would’ve kicked your ass for letting a job get you this strung out, and you know it.”

Thomas sat still absorbing Rick’s words, eyes on the floor. For a long stretch no one moved, the silence gathered around them so thick, Thomas could almost reach out and gather it up in his hands.

“I miss him,” Thomas suddenly found himself confessing. “Like…all the time. I can’t….” He closed his mouth with a click, shaking the rest of the thoughts around in his head.

“I know, man,” Rick said, softly. “I can’t get over the tragedy of him surviving that camp only to be taken out by a couple of punks.”

Thomas felt the hollow inside of him surge up until it was a living thing, choking the breath from him. He felt the backs of his eyes burn and kept them focused downward. Maybe he couldn’t have stopped those guys from taking Nuzo, but he damn well should have been fast enough to save him.

“I wouldn’t have survived that place without him,” Thomas managed.

He heard the emotion turn his voice rough, his words thin. He wanted to fold in on himself, disappear. He wanted to sleep for days. He wanted to run out into the ocean and swim until his shoulders burned and the waves carried him away.

“I’d have died there.”

“We got each other out, Tommy,” Rick reminded him. “You saved us just as much as Nuzo saved you.”

Thomas shook his head. “I just keep thinking something should… _stop_ , y’know?”

He looked up at his two best friends, his brothers, and felt the burn shift from the backs of his eyes to the front, suddenly not caring if they saw the emotion. It was stark on Rick’s face, swimming in his eyes as he stared back at Thomas. It was bowing TC’s shoulders, pulling the big man into something of a ball.

“Something should stop…but we just…keep going. _I_ just keep going,” Thomas continued, a tear tripping over his lashes and drawing a line of moisture down his cheek to the scruff at his chin. “It’s the only way, I….”

He paused, not ready to confess the next part. Not even sure how to put it into words.

“Only way you, what?” TC prompted.

Thomas dragged a hand down his face, banishing the tears with that motion. “Nothing, man. Don’t worry about it.”

He could tell TC wanted to push, but Rick saved him by stepping in. “How ‘bout we get out of here for a minute, huh? Go surfing for a bit?”

Thomas swallowed. He was exhausted, his muscles quivering as he sat there, but he didn’t think he’d be able to sleep without nightmares right now anyway. Maybe the ocean would help to settle him as it had in the past.

“Yeah, okay,” he agreed.

“And then maybe you take a break from the crazy-intense jobs for a bit, huh?” TC suggested, pushing to his feet. “Get a nice, easy…cheating husband or lost cat.”

“No cats,” Rick waved off, leading the way to the lanai where the surf boards were kept. “He’s allergic.”

“Oh, right,” TC nodded. “Cheating husband it is, then.”

As Thomas made his way behind his two friends, his phone buzzed. Pulling it out of his pocket, he skimmed the text and grinned. “Looks like you’re in luck, TC. One cheating husband, coming up.”

“God bless the philandering bastard,” Rick grinned back over his shoulder.

TC clapped a hand on Thomas’ shoulder, dragging the smaller man out into the sunshine. As they stepped out into the lawn, however, Thomas saw Higgins standing in the car lot, two buckets at her feet.

“Oh shit,” he muttered, pulling up to a stop.

“What is it?” Rick called out, reaching for a spare surfboard.

“No surfing for me, fellas,” Thomas informed them. “I got a Ferrari to detail.”

He caught TC and Rick exchange an unreadable glance.

“To hell with surfing.” Rick abruptly changed directions. “Let’s all do that!”

Thomas headed back inside to grab the keys from where he’d dropped them on the living room floor early that morning, then headed toward the front gate across the grass in a slightly wavering jog. Rick quickly caught up to him.

“How ‘bout I get the car, you go fill up the buckets.”

“But—” Thomas began to protest.

“Tommy, the way you’re weaving all over this yard, you’ll be lucky if you get that thing in through the gate.”

Thomas stared at his friend a moment, then relented, handing Rick the keys. He and TC joined Higgins in the car lot and he smiled at her when she handed him a sponge.

“Have fun, Gents,” she sing-songed, then turned back around to the house, calling the dogs to follow her.

“She’s enjoying this a bit too much,” Thomas muttered.

TC chuckled and clapped him on the back once more. As they waited for Rick to pull the car into the lot, they filled the buckets with water and soap from the garage work bench.

“You’re gonna need a heavy-duty sponge to get through this mess,” Rick called out as he turned off the engine. “What were you doing with her, Tommy? Donuts in a mosh pit?”

Thomas blinked in surprise at the condition of the car in the daylight. “I didn’t actually think it was this bad.”

“If the car looks like this, how did _you_ look?” TC wondered.

Thomas tilted his head. “Worse.”

As a team, they got to work on the car, spraying and scrubbing until every inch of mud, blood, and grease paint was gone. By the time they were done, Thomas was swaying on his feet once more. He didn’t even notice Rick pull TC aside to suggest putting the car in the assigned stall while he hauled Thomas back to the house. He simply stood still and stared at the cobble stoned car park.

“Hows about we head on back to the house, yeah?” Rick suggested, pulling Thomas’ eyes forward simply by his proximity.

“Thought you wanted to go surfing?” Thomas asked, confused. He was dizzy, unsteady, and felt oddly detached form the world around him.

“Yeah, kinda not all that excited about watching my best friend fall asleep on his board and drown,” Rick said with a shrug.

Thomas nodded. “I am kinda tired.”

“Really? I had no idea.”

Thomas let Rick grip his shoulder and lead him back to the guest house. He felt almost drunk with exhaustion. And there was something trembling inside of him. As if his lungs were trapped.

“Haven’t felt this tired since BUD/s,” he confessed suddenly. “Got so tired…forgot who I was for a bit.”

“Yeah, but you remembered, didn’t you?” Rick reminded him.

“Nuzo told me,” Thomas sighed, shuddering a bit in memory. “Told me who I was so I didn’t get lost.”

“He was a good friend, Tommy,” Rick agreed.

Thomas looked over at the taller man. “You’re a good friend, Rick.”

Rick smiled. “That’s the exhaustion talking.”

“You are, though,” Thomas reached up and patted the hand still on his shoulder, guiding him. “You’re like…our heart. All of us. Together. You’re our beating heart.”

“I forgot; sleep deprivation turns you into a poet,” Rick chuckled, navigating through the front door of the guest house and into Thomas’ small bedroom.

Thomas would have smiled at that if the effort hadn’t been so great.

“Dude,” Rick exclaimed, kicking a path through several discarded clothes strewn across the floor. “Your room looks like you’re losing a game of Jumanji.”

“Been busy,” Thomas tried to explain. “Lots…lotsa hours in the jungle.”

“Yeah, yeah, all work and no play,” Rick muttered, and suddenly Thomas felt himself half lifted up onto the bed. “How about you just worry about getting at least eight solid hours, okay, buddy?”

“Yep,” Thomas readily agreed because holy hell his bed was comfortable. He didn’t ever want to leave. He rolled to his side, pulling whatever covers he was able to grip with him and buried his head in his pillow.

“Sleep well, Tommy,” Rick said softly…or at least Thomas thought that’s what he heard.

Everything was muted and soft and in moments the silence was no longer heavy but something that wrapped around him and carried him gently into the darkness.

* * *

_Juliet_

She watched as the Island Hoppers rather garish, multi-colored van pull away from the estate and felt her shoulders ratchet up with tension. While the two former Marines were on the property, she knew someone was looking after a decidedly out-of-sync Magnum. With the men gone, a pressure erupted center mass of her chest.

Regardless of his blatant and frequent irresponsible behavior since he’d arrived at the estate, Magnum was a human being, and—based on what she’d witnessed that morning—one in need of minding, at least on a basic level. She may not _want_ to, but she was none-the-less compelled to ensure his well-being.

Especially as she could not get that lost look in his eyes out of her mind.

Leaving the Dobermans in the main house, Juliet headed toward the guest house, the late afternoon light slanting shadows across the manicured lawn. It was quiet enough she could hear the echo of her own breathing. She closed her mouth, stifling even that sound, listening instead for the cry of the gulls.

Something typical. Something _normal_.

Because for reasons she couldn’t yet surmise, this entire day had felt decidedly abnormal.

Juliet reached the edge of the lanai and paused, listening. Silence ruled the interior of the small house. She entered cautiously, eyes darting instinctively to where she’d first seen Magnum lying unconscious on the living room floor. The room was empty.

She exhaled slowly, eyes traveling across the vacant chairs, the quiet kitchen. Making her way further into the space, she began to uncoil from the irregular and unnamed anxiety that had wrapped around her since the moment Rick and TC had left the property. She paused at the edge of the couch, debating if she dared enter Magnum’s room to check on him, when the sight of sandy hair and a pink shirt startled her into gasping and bringing her hand to her mouth.

“What in the _bloody_ hell are you doing here?” She exclaimed, dropping her hand to the base of her throat.

Rick Wright looked up at her with heavy eyes, blue irises catching the fading daylight that filtered through the opened doorway and turning the color rather electric. He was sitting on the floor just outside of the closed door leading to Magnum’s bedroom, his back against the wall, knees pulled up and arms draped over them. He looked spent, wrung out, his eyes bruised by memories if not circumstance.

“Rick?” She moved cautiously forward, for the first time truly appreciating that these light-hearted men she’d taken for granted were not simply surfer jocks out for the perfect wave. “What—”

“I’m waiting,” he said, his voice low and rough.

“For…?”

He closed his eyes and dropped his head back against the wall. “Him.”

Juliet frowned, moving around the edge of the couch. She slid carefully to the ground, her back against the couch, across from him. “I saw TC leave a bit ago.”

The side of Rick’s mouth pulled up in what some might have called a smile. “Not TC.”

Juliet let the breath slip from her lungs slowly, assessing the situation. She’d observed Rick and TC helping Magnum detail the Ferrari earlier in the day, saw that the job had been finished, then several hours later watched the Island Hoppers van drive away as if all was as it should be. Nothing in the ensuing hours gave her any indication that Rick would have reason to look this…beaten.

“You’re waiting for Magnum?” she deduced.

Rick pointed to his nose with his index finger. “Atta girl.”

“Are you expecting a…a relapse?” She remembered how empty Magnum’s eyes had looked, how tightly wound he’d appeared when she’d woken him earlier.

“Of sorts,” Rick admitted.

Juliet frowned. “In all the time Magnum has lived here,” she shared, “I’ve never once heard any indication the man suffered from…from nightmares, or….”

“PTSD?” Rick pulled his head away from the wall, blue eyes sharp and calculating as they hit her.

“Well…yes,” she nodded.

She had seen the ways death and war changed people. She had felt it change her. She knew a body bore evidence of its journey through scars, movement, strength or weakness. But such evidence was inadmissible in the courtroom of the mind; all that mattered was how the journey was remembered, and how those memories capture each personal truth. And the truth she’d seen in Magnum was a man who cared selectively and who had no interest in engaging in the world beyond the pro bono pleasures offered to him by her employer.

“Until this morning, Magnum has shown no sign of any distress from your past experiences,” she stated.

“Distress,” Rick repeated, still looking at her with a level gaze that gave the impression he was sizing up the distance between them—for what, she wasn’t sure. “You mean like, what. Screaming? Panic attacks?”

Juliet shrugged slightly. “Yes, I suppose.”

Rick nodded, finally looking down. “If he made noise, they beat him.”

She blinked. “I’m sorry?”

“You haven’t _seen_ anything because you haven’t _heard_ anything…and you don’t hear anything because he doesn’t make any noise,” Rick revealed. “He spent…weeks, sometimes more than a month at a time alone, in the silence, in the dark. And if he made any noise—cried out, called out, resisted…they beat him. So, he learned…he learned not to make any noise.”

Juliet felt suddenly cold, her mouth dry.

_“When I was held captive, I wasn't exactly a model prisoner. I tried to steal a radio, I tried to steal a gun. So, the guards, they threw me in the hole. It was dark and lonely, and I felt like any day could be my last. I was scared….”_

“He, uh…,” she shifted her head slightly, searching for the best posture that didn’t put her in a defensive position in his eyes. “He told Amanda Sato that he wasn’t a model prisoner.”

At that Rick huffed out a laugh. “Yeah, that’s about right.”

“Why would he—”

Rick looked at her again. “Steal things? Cause trouble? Keep their attention focused on him? For us.” His eyes drifted, his gaze turning inward. “It was all for us.”

_“For all I knew, my friends could've been worse off than me, so I decided that those guys were more important than my fear. If I could just survive, I could help them escape. And we did.”_

“Supplies for your escape?” She guessed.

“Among other things,” Rick nodded. “It wasn’t easy on any of us when we broke out. We were…well, a mess. Sick, malnourished, TC had a broken arm.” He paused, shaking his head. “But Thomas was…bad. I almost… _we_ almost lost him. A few times. Before we even got to the hospital in Germany.” He looked toward the bedroom door. “And that’s when the real fun began.”

Juliet felt a weight in her chest at his words. Who was this man living so near her? Who was behind the disarming smiles, the frequent requests for favors, the seemingly blatant disregard for boundaries and ownership?

It suddenly occurred to her that everything she’d seen so far had been a façade. Like looking at a person through frosted glass. Magnum was rain-spattered windowpanes. Almost afraid of being seen clearly, seen in his entirety. And she wanted to know why.

Rick brought his hands up, elbows braced on tented knees, and dropped his face into his palms.

“I wouldn’t have made it out of there if it wasn’t for Thomas,” he confessed brokenly. “He thinks it was Nuzo, but…,” he shook his head, his hair rasping as it rubbed against calloused hands. “It was Thomas. He pulled me through. Without him, I have— _had_ —nothing. And when he….” Rick paused, pulling his head up and grabbing air like a drowning man. “If he hadn’t made it, I didn’t want to either.”

Juliet stayed very still. This sort of honesty was raw, brutal, unnerving. It wasn’t what someone shared on a whim, or to just anyone. She knew she must handle this man’s words with the utmost care.

“What are you waiting for him to do?” she asked carefully.

“We all have nightmares,” Rick said quietly. “I mean, we’d be pretty fucking crazy not to.”

Juliet nodded; her own nightmares left her with sweat-soaked sheets and trembling limbs too often for her liking.

“But Thomas, he…,” Rick huffed, and a sad sort of smile twisted his features, “he just sort of rolls with it. Acts like it’s no big deal—or worse, like he deserves it. Deserves to be hollowed out and gutted by…by misplaced guilt.”

“Misplaced?” Juliet asked.

Rick waved a hand in her direction, as though banishing the words he left to balance between them. She decided to change tactics.

“The human mind is incredibly powerful, but…it gets hurt like any other body part. Healing the brain is a lot more complex than…plates and screws or stitches and sutures. Perhaps Magnum’s method is simply his way of protecting the wound as it heals.”

“It’d be great if that were true,” Rick muttered. “But I—”

Just then they heard a soft _thump_ from the bedroom and Rick was on his feet so quickly Juliet would almost believe the man had been pulled up by a string. She scrambled to her feet as Rick wrapped long fingers around the doorknob.

“Thomas?”

There wasn’t a sound from the room. Juliet frowned as Rick turned the handle and opened the door a crack.

“I’m coming in,” Rick warned. “Don’t shoot me.”

At that, Juliet blinked and took a step to the side so that she wasn’t directly in front of the door. She had no idea if Rick were kidding with those last words but decided not to take the chance. Rick opened the door all the way and stepped inside. She was surprised to see the bed empty and glanced around the dimly lit room.

She saw him at the same time Rick did.

Magnum had pressed himself back into the far corner of the room, sitting against the wall in much the same position Rick had just abandoned, the shadows from the curtains hiding all but his bare legs. She couldn’t tell if he was armed, but she could see the tension in him from where she stood; it was the same as when she’d woken him earlier that day, caught between fight and flight, his entire bearing nothing but a thin, protective layer over an open wound.

And Rick was right: he was completely silent.

“Hey, buddy,” Rick said softly. “You with me?”

Magnum remained where he was. Juliet moved closer to the doorway, trying to keep out of his line of sight in case the presence of someone other than Rick would be a trigger point. Rick moved slowly forward, rolling his feet on the tile floor so that the sound of his steps didn’t break the quiet. Juliet followed, only stopping when Rick held a hand behind him, wordlessly holding her back.

She slipped into the shadows of the room where she could observe but not intrude. She could see now that Magnum was unarmed. His hands were clenched into trembling, white-knuckled fists at his sides, his eyes on Rick.

“Quiet,” Magnum whispered, his voice a ghost of his usual tone.

The barely-there sound of it raised goosebumps on Juliet’s skin and she bit down on her bottom lip to ground herself.

“It’s okay—” Rick started.

Magnum shook his head once, his fists trembling as though struggling against an unseen pressure. “They’ll hear you.”

“It’s just us here, Thomas,” Rick reassured him. “You can come on back to me.”

Juliet remembered how her acerbic tone and threat of dogs attacking him had brought Magnum out of the haze earlier. She almost stepped forward to once more offer that solution but paused when Rick crouched down across from Magnum. She watched as Rick lifted his hand, hesitating a moment. She could understand why—it was exactly the reason she hadn’t wanted to touch Magnum earlier: the man was a clenched fist, a lit fuse, and it wasn’t clear how he would react to unfamiliar contact.

Easing his hand forward, Rick carefully gripped the back of Magnum’s neck in a hold that looked as though it was practiced, familiar. An anchor in the storm. Magnum’s trembling fists stilled, and Juliet watched as his posture immediately eased, recognizing Rick’s touch in the midst of his darkness.

“There’s blood…,” Magnum whispered. “Blood in the sand.”

“I see it, too,” Rick confessed, softly.

At those words, Magnum’s eyes shifted from the middle distance to his friend’s face. Rick nodded when they made eye contact and for a moment Juliet could see what Rick was referring to in between Magnum’s sluggish blinks. Horrors beyond her comprehension. Dark holes filled with rats. Sand and fleas and hunger and heat and cold. Heavy fists, fiery bullets. Loneliness, hopelessness, brotherhood. Fear and rebellion creeping like tentacles down their throats, breaking their bones.

Death waiting for them…and then denied.

“I…put it away,” Magnum said suddenly, and Juliet flinched at this new sound in his voice—rough, broken. “I keep…putting it away.”

“But it comes back, doesn’t?” Rick said, shifting to his hip so that he sat next to Magnum, their shoulders touching.

“Box won’t stay shut,” Magnum murmured. “Keep closing it…keep putting it away….”

“It’s okay, Thomas,” Rick said, carefully sliding an arm around Magnum’s shoulders. “Sometimes the monsters get out.”

He tugged gently and Magnum seemed to slump, leaning against Rick’s shoulder and chest, and it struck Juliet how much smaller he was than the other man. Magnum had never seemed small or slight. He’d always appeared strong, capable, cocky even. But in this moment, he looked…fragile. Breakable.

Someone to be guarded, protected.

She wondered how he’d managed to resist for so long, how he’d managed to help them escape. She watched as Rick put a hand on top of Magnum’s dark hair, tucking his friend’s head against his shoulder, and held him there.

Waiting.

After several moments where Juliet felt she could literally count her own heartbeats, Magnum stirred, pulling up and pushing slightly away from his friend.

“Rick?”

“Hey, man.”

“What…?”

She watched as his dark eyes tracked the space of the room, not quite hitting on her. She could see awareness creep back in just as before, and with it…was that, shame?

“Son of a bitch,” Magnum muttered, curling in on himself and putting his head in his hands.

Rick pulled his arm away, giving his friend a moment to collect himself.

“I’m sorry, man,” Magnum said behind his hands.

“Got nothing to be sorry for,” Rick informed him. “At least you didn’t try to shoot me this time.”

“I locked my gun up,” Magnum revealed.

Rick huffed. “You had a feeling this might happen, didn’t you?”

Magnum said nothing. Juliet held completely still. Rick rubbed the top of Magnum’s head affectionately.

“When are you going to believe that you don’t have to go through this alone, man?”

“When are you going to believe you don’t have to pull my ass out of the fire every time?” Magnum countered.

Rick held up his hand and Juliet saw the Cross of Lorraine ring that each of them wore glinting in the soft daylight.

“Never, brother,” he reminded him. “We survived together. We got out together. We keep going…together.”

“’cept Nuzo,” Magnum mumbled, dropping his hands away from his face.

Rick sighed. “Yeah, man. Except Nuzo.”

Juliet frowned. She knew that the rowdy Italian had been an important figure in Magnum’s life but hadn’t truly appreciated the impact his death had on the private investigator. In her defense, Magnum hadn’t really been all together open and honest about much of anything in his life. He didn’t appear to _want_ her to know how much the man’s death had impacted him.

But now, it seemed, the memories he’d allowed to bubble to the surface when talking with Amanda Sato had sent him in a tailspin. The business of life is that acquisition of memories. In the end, that’s all there is. And when those memories are so full of pain and darkness, what sort of life is one left with?

“You want to sleep again?” Rick asked finally.

Magnum made a noise low in his throat, something caught between a sob and a growl. “What I _want_ doesn’t really much matter at the moment.”

“How ‘bout I hang out for a while?” Rick offered.

“Doesn’t appear I can stop you,” Magnum pointed out with a casual wave of his hand.

Rick’s head _thunked_ against the wall behind him. “Okay, dumbass, how about I hang out on _this side_ of the door and you decide to understand what I’m saying?”

Magnum was quiet for a moment. “You don’t have to do that.”

“I know.”

“I can handle this, Rick,” Magnum insisted, though he still hadn’t moved. “I’m fine.”

“You will be,” Rick agreed. “After some actual sleep.”

“It’s not fair to you,” Magnum pointed out, still half-heartedly resisting whatever it was that Rick was offering.

“Thomas,” Rick sighed, his voice infinitely tired. “How many times did you hold onto me in that place, reminding me that I wasn’t alone? That the monsters weren’t going to eat me.”

Magnum was quiet for another minute. Then, with a decided smile in his voice, he said, “They can kill us, but they can’t eat us—”

“—that’s against the law,” Rick finished, and Juliet could see a smile relaxing his features.

She had no idea what they were talking about, but it seemed to calm Magnum enough that he nodded.

“Yeah, okay.”

Rick nodded once and pushed to his feet, his back to her as he reached for Magnum’s hand. Juliet chose that moment to slip around the corner, decidedly out of sight.

“Is anyone else here?” Magnum asked groggily.

Juliet held her breath. What would he think about her having witnessed this moment of vulnerability, this moment of realness?

“Just you and me, brother,” Rick replied.

Magnum sighed and Juliet heard the bed creak and shift. “Good. I’d hate for Higgy to hold this over my head.”

There was a pause and she heard Rick asked, “You really think she would?”

Magnum yawned. “Who knows, man…. Half the time…I think she hates me…then sometimes…she’s….”

Juliet strained to hear the next word.

“Tommy?” Rick called softly.

When there wasn’t a reply, Juliet realized that Magnum had once again fallen asleep. She peeked around the corner of the opened bedroom door and saw that Magnum lay curled on his side under the sheets, Rick sitting up next to him on the bed, leaning against the headboard, a hand on his friend’s shoulder, grounding and solid.

She met Rick’s eyes and the older man nodded at her. Nodding back, she turned and crept from the guest house and back across the lawn to the main house, head spinning and world once more tilted off its axis because of one Thomas Magnum.


	2. Chapter 2

I know you can’t remember how to shine  
Your heart, a bird without the wings to fly  
Is anybody out there?  
Can you take this weight of mine?

_-Carry You_ , Ruelle (feat Fleurie)

_Thomas_

Thomas Sullivan Magnum was not a reckless man.

He’d done reckless things, sure, but all in the name of a greater plan. And always with a trust in the men at his side, watching his back. It was because of those men he was still alive; therefore, recklessness was not an option. He owed it to them to be thoughtful.

Which meant researching this next job a bit more thoroughly than he had the previous one.

When he’d woken up after an afternoon spent scouring mud and blood and grease paint from Robin’s Ferrari, Rick had been by his side, slumped against the headboard of the bed, snoring loudly. It had taken him several befuddled minutes to realize that it was mid-afternoon the next day and that his friend had spent the entire time next to him, calming him with his presence so that he didn’t spiral into memories that took him to dark places inside his mind.

Rick had, of course, acted like it was not a big deal, that he’d do it again in a heartbeat, but Thomas felt ashamed. He wasn’t the only one who’d been through hell. He wasn’t the only one who had boxes inside his head. And he needed to not burden his friends when those boxes wouldn’t stay shut. Rick and TC had their own demons to battle; they didn’t need to take his on.

So, he swam, and he surfed, and he worked the soreness from his ribs and put frozen peas on his swollen eyebrow, and he teased the dogs, and said things that made Higgins roll her eyes in exasperation. He stretched the days out until Rick was grinning like a teenager again and TC was bouncing his shoulders to a Marvin Gaye song and they breathed easier around him. He locked the lids on the boxes inside of him, he let his bruises heal, and he looked into his next case.

A nice, easy cheating husband, just like TC had requested.

Meghan Iona was a forty-year-old realtor on the big island, married for twenty years to an investment banker—a fact which had Thomas grimacing and rubbing at his still-healing ribs—with two children, both in high school. After seeing odd charges appear on their bank account—a fact which her husband explained was due to unexpected work travel—and having him not come home several nights, she became suspicious of her husband’s behavior and decided to hire a private investigator.

To be thorough, Thomas asked Meghan to come to the estate and talk with him further before he agreed to take on the case. This time, Higgins let her in without her usual complaints about his endless parade of women—which he never understood anyway. The only women he’d had visit the guest house had all been clients. He couldn’t imagine a woman wanting to take on the mess that was Thomas Magnum, but Higgins didn’t know that. Clearly.

“Can I get you something to drink?” Thomas offered as he let Meghan into the now-clean living room.

“Water would be great,” Meghan smiled, sitting down in the chair he offered.

She was very attractive, with olive-toned skin, dark brown eyes, and long black hair that was twisted up in a knot on top of her head. Her smile didn’t hit her eyes, Thomas noticed. There was a sadness there, yes, but also something else. Tension in the delicate skin pulling at the edges, accentuated by the darting glances into the far corners of the room.

Thomas sat across from her, handing her a glass of water, not missing the way her hand trembled slightly as she took it from him.

“Mrs. Iona—”

“Meghan, please,” she corrected.

“Meghan,” Thomas smiled at her, softening his gaze in an effort to put her at ease. “You said you started to notice this change of behavior in your husband a few weeks ago?”

Nodding, she set the glass down on the coffee table and rubbed her thin hands together. He noticed that she wore a rather large diamond wedding band on her left and a silver ring on her right—four interlocking circles that symbolized strength in the Hawaiian culture. Rick had gotten a tattoo just like it when they first reached the island.

“Yes,” she finally replied. “Though, when I think back…there’s always been something… _off_ about Dev.”

Devlin Iona, son of a Hawaiian businessman and an Irish singer, established himself in the Honolulu banking industry in his mid-twenties and had grown in power and prestige regularly since then. At least, according to the Google search Thomas was able to do on his phone. He could have gotten more had he asked Higgins for help, but he’d decided to lay low for a bit. He didn’t want to press his luck after the whole Ferrari fiasco last week.

“Off how?” Thomas pressed.

Meghan hesitated, rubbing her hands together nervously.

“Meghan,” Thomas dropped his chin, looking at her steadily. “I can’t help you if I don’t have all the information.”

“Mr. Magnum,” Meghan said, her voice catching on a sob. “I’m afraid of my husband.”

That much was clear. The woman was strung as tight as a bow. Thomas couldn’t see any visible bruising or signs of physical abuse, but there were plenty of ways to strike terror into another person. He knew that intimately.

“I have a friend at HPD—”

Meghan shook her head before he finished his sentence.

“No, I can’t. He doesn’t know, and my children…they….” With a shaking hand, she picked up the water once more, taking a sip. “That’s why I called you.”

Thomas held up one hand in a gesture of peace. “Okay, it’s okay. How about you walk me through it?”

“My father wanted me to marry well,” Meghan began. “I had fallen in love with a boy…a-a surfer. But my father,” she shook her head. “So, he arranged a match with a friend of his whose son—Devlin—was accomplishing great things in the banking industry. He felt it would be good for me.” She looked at him, her eyes beseeching. “I know it sounds incredibly traditional and old-fashioned, but…I was twenty years old and I had _nothing_ without my father, and I—”

“Hey, hey,” Thomas waved his hand slowly, “it’s okay. No judgement. We do what we have to in order to survive.”

Meghan nodded, her shoulders lowering slightly in relief. “At first…it was okay. Our boys were born, and I spent their childhood just…being a mom. Whatever Dev did…it didn’t matter, really. I had the boys to focus on. But…they’ve gotten older and they have their own friends, so…I became a realtor.”

Thomas nodded, encouraging her to continue, a sinking feeling in his gut telling him this wasn’t going to be that easy case TC had pleaded he take.

“And that’s when things got…well, it’s just that,” she looked out through the opened doorway toward the ocean. “Dev would take clients to some of my show houses, claiming that it would be a way to promote the properties. And he would ask me to list houses I’d never seen for his clients. Just trust him on this, he’d say. And I couldn’t…I couldn’t go against him.”

“I understand,” Thomas nodded carefully, keeping his eyes on her. Watching her body language, the way she rubbed at the ring symbolizing strength as she spoke. The woman was on edge. “What made you think he was cheating?”

She exhaled slowly. “He’s never really been interested in me,” she confessed, color blossoming on her cheeks. “It was more my father’s money that attracted him. And he adores our sons. But me…he could honestly do without. And recently, I’ve seen too many signs to believe the work trip excuses. The houses he wants me to list without seeing are way off the beaten path, where no one will easily find them. And he comes home from long _business trips_ with a strange smell on his clothes….”

Thomas nodded. “And you can’t talk to him about this? Ask him what it all means?”

“Mr. Magnum,” Meghan looked at him with tears in her eyes. “I want to leave him, but in order to do so and not have my father completely cut me off—and therefore my boys—I have to have proof that he is unfaithful to me. If I confront him…and he is able to explain it away, then my credibility is shot.”

It was on the tip of his tongue to counter that she was working as a realtor and didn’t really need her father’s money, but he knew that part of the story wasn’t any of his business. People had all sorts of reasons for why they made the choices they did; he was the last person to stand in judgement of another.

Thomas leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees and folded his fingers together.

“Meghan, if I find what you think I will, it may not be easy to see,” he warned her. “People think they’re ready for it, but…betrayal is a tough, tough pill to swallow.”

Meghan Iona’s hands suddenly became rock steady and she drew herself up, shoulders squaring. “Mr. Magnum, I was betrayed twenty years ago when my father made me marry a man I didn’t love. There is nothing you can show me that will top that.”

Thomas nodded once. “Okay. Then all I need are some locations you expect him to be, and I’ll get you what you need.”

With a relieved sigh, Meghan smiled and stuck out her hand for him to shake. She handed him an envelope of cash, saying she didn’t want her husband to be able to trace his name on a check and know what she was up to, and then a list of several out-of-the-way houses she was selling on Devlin’s behalf. Information in hand, Thomas escorted Meghan off the estate, tossing Higgins a friendly wave as she frowned at him from her yoga pagoda.

She was always frowning at him these days. But it wasn’t her usual frown of disapproval, he noticed. It was more…concern. And he had no idea what to do with that.

He moved on, grabbed his camera, phone, and keys, and headed to the car park to jump into the Ferrari. The first house on the list was a bit close to the main thoroughfare and his gut told him that wasn’t going to be the place Devlin would be doing anything that would get him cut off from Meghan’s father’s money via divorce. He needed to go deeper.

He’d learned to listen to his gut—it was a little voice in his head that guided him through this job, and had kept him alive, kept him sane, while in the camp. Of course, some might say hearing voices was a sure sign of insanity, but for Thomas it had been the voice of his father, his friends, his commanding officer, someone he trusted, someone he knew, someone who always had his back.

Without that voice, it would have been utterly silent for days at a time in the hole, and _that_ would have driven him insane.

So, he listened to the voice, pulling the Ferrari off the side of the road near the address of the third house on the list as daylight began to fade. He was miles away from the city, well into a more rainforest area, plush undergrowth, and a deep canopy of trees. The road leading to this location had been filled with switchbacks and hair-pin turns, nothing someone would easily follow without GPS or specific directions. This was as out-of-the-way as one gets.

As he walked quietly up a densely covered path, the little voice was nagging him for not at least mentioning to someone where he was going, but it was a bit late for that now. He didn’t even have cell reception now. All he needed were a few pictures catching Devlin Iona in the act and he could get back to Meghan and call this job done. And maybe not take a cheating husband case for a bit; they always seemed to screw with his faith in humanity.

About a half mile up the road, he finally saw the house. Several cars—large SUVs—were parked off to the side of the lot and lights were on inside what appeared to be the main room. He could hear music and low voices slipping through the cracked windows. Approaching from the side, Thomas pulled out his camera and positioned himself near one of the windows where the curtains were blowing open, offering a partially unobstructed view of the interior.

He’d learned long ago that grabbing evidence wasn’t a matter of the perfect shot, but rather a series of images that assembled a bigger picture. A story could be told from a picture that had nothing to do with what was taking place—but when enough pictures were strung together, the story unfolded in stark truth.

Resting the camera lens on the windowsill, Thomas opened the shutter and let the camera run even before he peered into the room himself. By the sounds and smells wafting through the window, he suspected at least a pretty heavy party. When he glanced away from his camera sight into the room, however, he found himself stilling with shock.

Devlin Iona was indeed in the room, but he wasn’t cheating on his wife—at least not in the strictest sense of the word. Two other men were in the room as well, both inhaling lines of cocaine from small mirrors. Stacks of the drug adorned a table. In the corner of the room, a young woman was tied to the wall, the vacant look on her face telling Thomas that she was either traumatized or drugged.

And his client’s husband was inventorying a case of military-issue weapons from a wooden strong box.

“What the hell…?” Magnum whispered to himself.

He couldn’t decide what to capture first—drugs, weapons, human trafficking…Devlin got a hat trick with one photograph. He needed to get out of there, call Katsumoto. This was _not_ the case he needed right now; it was much more than he was equipped to handle.

Pulling the camera from the windowsill, he started to take a step back when the woman suddenly looked over at the window, meeting his eyes. Thomas froze. He didn’t want to leave her there, but how was he going to—

“Narc!” The woman suddenly screamed. “At the window! Narc!”

All three men looked his way.

“Shit,” Thomas muttered, turning to run toward the lot where he’d seen the SUVs parked.

He hadn’t gotten more than half a dozen strides when he was hit with a flying tackle that took him to the ground, hard. The air rushed from his lungs and he lost his grip on the camera. Gasping, he brought his arms up protectively as he was flipped to his back.

“How the hell’d you find this place?” one of the men growled.

“Look, fellas,” Thomas started. “I’m lost. Was just going to—”

A hard kick to his ribs broke off his sentence, his excuse evaporating.

“With a camera?” Devlin Iona crouched down by his head, the camera held out in front of his eyes. “Try again, chief.”

“You got this all wrong—”

Another kick, and this time Thomas felt something give inside his chest.

“Look, if you want an explanation, you’re gonna have to stop—”

They didn’t stop. Instead, they tag-teamed.

He lost track of who kicked, who punched, and who just stood by and laughed. At one point he felt his phone, keys, and wallet pulled from his pocket. At another he heard the crack of his camera being stomped on. His body thrummed with reactive pain, his head screamed at him to escape, evade.

But there were too many of them, and they came at him too fast.

“Dude ain’t a narc,” one of them finally said, as Thomas curled up on his side, gasping for air, his arms up around his head. “He’s some kind of P.I.”

“Fuck,” Devlin muttered. He reached down and grabbed Thomas by the hair, jerking his head up and out of the protective cocoon of his arms. “Who hired you?”

“It…it was an…an anonymous…tip,” Thomas gasped, the salty tang of blood on his tongue. “’bout the…the w-weapons.”

“A tip, huh?” Devlin released his hair and Thomas’ head bounced once against the dirt. “Had to be that asshole Arens.”

“Your contact from the base?”

“Had to be. He’s pissed we cut the price.”

As they debated who’d betrayed them, Thomas took advantage of their lack of attention and started to pull himself toward the trees flanking the edges of the driveway.

“Ah, no you don’t,” Devlin barked, his foot coming down hard between Thomas’ shoulder blades and shoving his face into the dirt. “You saw too much, there, Private Dick.”

Thomas grunted, wedging his hands beneath him in an instinctive move to push up and unseat the guy’s foot. “I…prefer Private…Investigator.”

Devlin laughed and, in that moment, Thomas flung himself over to his back, grabbing the man’s leg and twisting as he rolled. Devlin cried out in pain as Thomas felt something snap, then fell to the dirt. The other two were apparently too surprised by Thomas’ unexpected move to react until he’d managed to get to his feet, wavering as he tried to get his bearings and figure out which way was out.

“Don’t just stand there, you idiots!” Devlin shouted; pain clear in his voice. “Get him!”

But Thomas wasn’t waiting for their coked-out brains to catch up to necessary action. He ran down the long, dirt driveway, his ribs licking fire up his sides and a spike of pain crashing through his skull. His vision swam, bending the trees in twisted nightmares across the rapidly darkening path.

He had one thought: _escape_.

If he didn’t stop moving, they couldn’t catch him. They couldn’t put him back in that hole. They couldn’t keep him silent and scared. He just had to keep moving.

When he hit the road, he staggered to a halt, momentarily confused by sight of blacktop and white lines instead of barren sand and jagged rocks.

“What…? How did—”

Not _there_. He wasn’t there, not anymore. He was in Hawaii.

“Get ahold of yourself, Thomas,” he whispered. “You’re free. You’re safe.”

A shot echoed behind him.

“Well, safe might be stretching it a bit,” he grunted as he took off for where he’d parked the Ferrari, suddenly thankful that Rick had taught him to hotwire a vehicle. Higgins was going to be pissed…but she’d be angrier if he didn’t bring the car back at all.

He found the car, ripped the door open and climbed inside, ducking underneath the dash to pull the wires loose. It was only then he realized he had nothing on him to strip the outer casing.

“Shit,” he growled, closing his eyes to think.

“There he is!”

The voices were far enough away that if the car was running, he would be able to escape without problem. As it was—

An errant shot hit the side mirror causing Thomas to flinch violently as the glass shattered. Moving on pure instinct, he grabbed one of the glass shards from the gravel just outside the opened door and hurriedly used it to cut the wires, ducking again as another bullet narrowly missed hitting the car, ricocheting off the pavement near the front tire.

After several agonizing seconds, the Ferrari sputtered and sparked, then roared to life.

Thomas pulled himself inside as one of the men reached the car, grabbing for the opened door. Throwing the car into gear and slamming his foot on the gas, Thomas let inertia swing the door shut as he pulled away from the two gunmen, breathing hard as he tried to keep his eyes focused on the road.

“TC’s gonna kill me,” he muttered, shifting into fifth and keeping the accelerator planted.

Adrenalin was an incredible thing. It took until he was seeing the lights of the city again before the beating he’d taken began to catch up with him. A blare of a car horn shook him aware as he began to drift across the center line.

“Dammit,” he muttered.

He wasn’t going to make it back to Robin’s like this. His instinct was to call Rick, but he had to figure out what to do about the Ferrari before he called anyone. He was already on thin ice with Higgins as it was from the last infraction.

Looking around at the rapidly passing scenery, he tried to get his bearings. Suddenly he remembered a case he’d worked on a few months back for a guy who owned a body shop. He’d been paid through exchange of favors. All he had to do was make it to the lot….

“What was his name?” Thomas muttered to himself, his voice pitched low so they wouldn’t hear.

He couldn’t afford for them to hear— _wait_. No. He shook his head. There was no one listening. Not anymore.

_Jesus_ , what was the matter with him?

His head swam, and the spike of constant pain that ran from the base of his skull out through his eye was enough to make him nauseous. At this point, he was moving on muscle memory alone.

“Shep!” he said out loud, and then because he could, he repeated, “Shep! That was the guy. Shep’s Automotive. Or…something like that.”

He reached to GPS the location of Shep’s place, except— _shit_ —he didn’t have his phone! This was bad. This was very, very bad.

“Holy shit, there it is,” he exclaimed as he saw the large sign off the side of the main road. Maybe God didn’t hate him after all.

Pulling over into the empty lot outside of Shep’s Automotive, he stopped the car under a light, disengaged the wires, and let the vehicle tremble to stillness around him. He felt his body ticking down in time with the cooling engine. Twisting the rear-view mirror, he looked at his reflection, running his tongue over a split lower lip and gingerly pressing on the cut beneath his left eye. The blood had dried, giving him the effect of ghoulish tears.

“Not hiding this one, Magnum,” he muttered, an arm wrapping around his middle. He slowly exhaled. What a mess.

Looking at his watch, he realized that Katsumoto was off shift, but the man was a work horse. He could still call—

“Shit!” Thomas pounded the steering wheel.

Not having his phone was really starting to piss him off.

Breathing slowly, he gripped the bridge of his nose with trembling fingers. If he could just get his head to stop hurting, just for a minute, maybe he could make a plan…he just needed to _think_ , but it was so _hard_ with pain slipping across him like a living thing, blanketing him in a bone-deep misery and pulling a recalcitrant groan from his gut.

Without realizing it, he slid sideways in his seat, his hands coming up to grip the sides of his head, trying to press back the pain. He didn’t register slipping away from consciousness. It was more of a stumbling into darkness where images of a dirt hole waited for him.

A place where he had two buckets and the clothes on his back. A place where he named the rats that found their way through the dirt walls. A place where the only way to mark time was a sliver of sunlight crossing the opening like a sundial in the sky.

“Magnum?”

Thomas gasped, jerking awake, sweat coating his skin.

He looked out through the windshield of the Ferrari, completely disoriented, and shivered in the cool air. Dawn scraped the edge of the horizon, pushing the low-lying clouds west and south, but the usual sound of birds that greeted the sun were vacant from the morning.

“Dude, you okay?”

Thomas blinked over at the man standing next to him. He seemed familiar, but where--?

“You look like you got jumped, man.”

The night before rushed back to him like a tsunami leaving him dizzy and nauseous once more. Or hell…maybe that was just his head.

“I did,” he rasped, his voice sounding like he’d plucked it from a box full of thorns. “Need your help, Shep.”

Shep was a short, slightly rotund man with a halo of graying hair and what appeared to be a permanent wad of chewing tobacco in his lower lip. Thomas had liked him instantly. At Thomas’ plea, Shep opened the damaged driver’s side door and reached gingerly for his arm, easing him out of the car and to his feet as if he were made of glass.

“Need me to call the cops?”

Thomas shook his head carefully; he had a very real fear that it might topple off his neck and roll down the street if he moved too quickly.

“I need to do that—but, uh…can I borrow your phone?”

“Sure,” Shep nodded, spitting off to the side. “The guys who did this to you take yours?”

“Yeah,” Thomas nodded. “Think you can help me get the mirror fixed?”

“Absolutely,” Shep replied. “Been waiting for you to cash in on what I owe you.”

“Had to hotwire it, too,” Thomas revealed, rolling his stiff shoulders. There was nothing fun about getting his ass kicked and then sleeping in his car all night. “Think you can fix that?”

“I can get this baby purring like a kitten in no time,” Shep grinned, his tobacco-stained lip stretching across slightly yellowed teeth. “You gonna need a ride?”

Thomas grinned back at him. “You’re good people, Shep.”

“You did me a solid, kid,” Shep lifted a shoulder. “Not gonna forget that anytime soon. C’mon, I’ll fix you some coffee while you call the fuzz.”

Thomas followed the stocky man into the small office, the smell of oil, grease, and stale cigarette smoke hitting him like a punch to the jaw. He staggered back slightly, bracing a hand on the door frame and closing his eyes to get his balance.

“You’re not gonna pass out on me, are you?”

Shep’s voice was much closer than Thomas anticipated. He jerked, eyes flying open. Shep’s hand came up to grasp his shoulder immediately, steadying him. Thomas took a shaky breath and gave Shep a smile meant to reassure.

“’m good,” he promised. Then frowned. “You maybe got some aspirin I can take with that coffee?”

Shep nodded, wild gray eyebrows pulled low over muddy brown eyes. “Phone’s there. How ‘bout you take a load off while I get the coffee?”

Thomas nodded, dropping heavily into the desk chair and picking up the office phone. It took him a moment to remember Katsumoto’s number. He didn’t even think to check the time of day until he heard the other man’s voice.

_“Detective Katsumoto.”_

“Katsumoto,” Thomas repeated, feeling a strange sense of relief wash over him.

_“Magnum?”_ Katsumoto’s voice was caught between confusion and irritation. As it typically was whenever Thomas called him, come to think of it. _“Do you have any idea what time it is?”_

Thomas blinked. The sun was up; that was basically all he knew. “Not really,” he replied honestly. “Listen, I need your help—”

_“What makes you think I have any interest in helping you?”_ Katsumoto’s voice was tired; Thomas wondered fleetingly if the man had pulled a late shift.

“Okay, well, how about this?” Thomas sighed. He was pretty damn tired himself. “I need to report a crime.”

_“Did you cause this crime?”_

Thomas almost smiled; he might have deserved that. “Not this time.”

He reported what he’d seen and where the house was located.

_“And this was last night?”_ Katsumoto’s voice was hard now, focused.

Shep showed up with a mug of black coffee and some aspirin. Thomas inhaled the scent of the coffee and quickly swallowed the pain meds before answering.

“Yes, that’s right,” he said, rubbing his forehead. The spike of pain had dulled overnight, but he was still aching.

_“Why are you just calling me now?”_ Katsumoto demanded.

Thomas didn’t have the energy to banter with the man. “Because they kicked my ass and took my phone,” he replied. “Are you going to go check it out?”

_“Yes,”_ Katsumoto replied. _“Wait, Magnum are you saying they have your phone?”_

Thomas closed his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Mmmhmm.”

_“I’m sending a security detail—”_

“That’s not necessary,” Thomas protested. “I’m heading back to Robin’s Nest; plenty of security there.”

_“What’s wrong with you?”_ Katsumoto suddenly demanded, forcing Thomas’ eyes open with the unexpected concern.

“Nothing.”

_“You’re lying.”_

“Well, I mean…it’s never fun getting your ass handed to you by a couple of thugs, but it’s nothing I can’t handle.”

_“You sure?”_

Thomas brought his head up, smiling into the phone. “Wow, Gordie. It’s almost like you might care about what happens to me.”

_“Don’t push your luck,”_ Katsumoto muttered, then hung up.

Thomas stared at the phone for several seconds before hitting the off button. He needed to get back to Robin’s, get Meghan’s number, warn her. He looked up at Shep, smiling weakly in the face of the older man’s concern.

“You still good for a ride?”

Thomas had Shep drop him at the gate—not looking to raise the suspicion of a certain hyper-vigilant majordomo who would no doubt be eyeing the security cameras over her morning coffee. Or tea. Wait…did Higgins even drink tea? And why the _hell_ was he worrying about that now?

Pulling in a slow breath to re-center his focus, Thomas got Shep’s promise to call when the car was ready, then punched in the code to open the main gate and headed to the guest house. It was still early; Higgins hadn’t yet ventured to her pagoda for yoga, so he was able to slip into the house undetected. He found Meghan’s number in his notebook and called her before he did anything else.

“You need to get your boys and get away from him,” Thomas told her. “Say you’re going to visit relatives or something.”

_“I have been wanting to see my favorite aunt on the mainland,”_ Meghan ventured, her voice trembling slightly with unease. _“Mr. Magnum…are you sure? Devlin didn’t even come home last night.”_

Thomas huffed. “He was probably going to get his leg checked out. Pretty sure I dislocated his knee.”

_“Jesus.”_

“Yeah, look,” Thomas continued, pressing the base of his hand into the hollow of his eye. His head was relentless at the moment. “The cops are going to be checking out the house, and they may have some questions for you. I’ll have them call this number, but you need to get out of there for now.”

_“Okay,”_ Meghan agreed. _“Thank you, Mr. Magnum.”_

“And Meghan?” Thomas sighed. “I’m sorry. I know this isn’t the outcome you were looking for.”

_“Strange as it sounds, this could be better,”_ she weakly laughed. _“Getting arrested for drugs and weapons beats cheating any day in my father’s book.”_

Thomas hung up the phone, then gripped the kitchen counter for balance as the room spun slowly around him. Closing his eyes briefly, he pulled in a long, slow breath through his nose, then blew it out on a four count through parted lips. _Control your breathing…._ He could almost hear Nuzo’s voice coaching him.

Maybe if he were to lie down for a bit he could kick this damn headache.

Making his way to the bathroom, he winced when he saw the bruises gathered around his occipital bone and along his jaw. The cut along his cheek bone was puffy and red, too. Of course, the fuckers had to wear rings. Splashing cold water on his face, he cleaned off the blood and smudges of dirt, gripping the edge of the sink and letting his head hang low to stretch his neck.

_Sleep_. That’s all he needed. Sleep for a few hours and then he could handle everything else.

Stumbling to the bed, Thomas tried to ignore the quiet of the guest house pressing against him. He fell into the pile of sheets and blankets—not even bothering to remove his shoes—and sank into sleep almost instantly.

* * *

_Korengal, 2015_ , _Thomas_

The dust smelled different here.

It was one of the first things he’d noticed when they’d initially dropped him into the hole—and it _was_ a hole, twice as deep as he was tall, and only wide enough for him to take one stride across its diameter before his nose hit a dirt wall. They dropped a metal grate over the top after him, giving him just enough room to stand hunched over, but not enough room to straighten up. And they altered their methods for hauling him out again, depending on their plans for him: if he was lucky it was a ladder; if he wasn’t, it was a rope…sometimes for him to climb, sometimes around his neck.

The dust in the hole smelled different than back at the base. Heavier, somehow. Like each grain of sand held the anguish of too many souls.

The cave smelled like mildew.

Old rock and stale exhales. A temperate time capsule of unwashed bodies, blood, and misery. It was dark, save the overhead bulb in the center of the maze of cage doors, the light a garish mockery of day. The guards enjoyed causing the bulb to swing loosely when they came in to haul one of them away for questioning, or bring in their daily food allotment, the shadows teasing and taunting them like specters.

The hole, though, it was outside of the cave. They hauled him out of the cage, out of the cave, away from his friends. They interrogated him, beat him, then dragged him outside where for just a moment he was teased with light, with fresh air, with _hope_ …and then they dropped him in the hole, the metal grate clanging down on top of him.

The first time was because of water.

They were all dehydrated, but it was hitting Rick the hardest. He’d started to hallucinate one morning, and Thomas knew he had to do something soon or they were going to lose him. So, he’d tackled a guard when their food was delivered, pulled out the man’s belt knife and held it against the soft underside of his chin until a bucket of water was brought in.

That had earned him a rifle butt to the temple and an unceremonious deposit in the hole. But Rick got water, and that was all that had mattered. Everything that happened after was just details. The threats, the insults, the beatings, the pain.

It wasn’t difficult to discern what they shouted at him, looming above him as they were. Primarily because Thomas spoke several languages.

He grew up with his mother speaking Spanish and was fluent in both it and English by the age of three. Because of that, it had been easy to pick up on many others—French and Italian, casually. Japanese and Korean for a short time in school. He’d made himself learn Dari and Pashtu when he joined the SEALs.

He knew what the guards were saying; he just didn’t want them to think they got the best of him. _Ever_.

Even when he was bleeding to death. Which came later.

That first time in the hole, he learned quickly that shouting back at them—not to mention crying out in pain—earned swift and brutal reprisals. He was pulled from the hole only to be beaten unconscious and wake back at the bottom again—and they didn’t even ask him any questions. He could see his own blood splattered on the sand, a rat scurrying from a crack in the dirt wall near his head to gather a clump of bloody sand and carry it back to whatever little nest it was creating.

He watched that rat for days, talking to it in his head, creating responses for it, an entire storyline for the rat’s life worthy of Walt Fucking Disney himself. Until at last they hauled him up and returned him to the cage with his friends.

He’d been away nine days. Or so Nuzo had told him. Nuzo, their timekeeper. Their watcher.

They’d thought he was dead. If he were honest with himself, he’d been wondering that himself for a little while there.

He didn’t think Rick was going to let go of him that first time.

The blond man’s arms had wrapped around him and he’d felt his friend’s body tremble against him as he’d sobbed, “I thought we’d lost you, man. I thought they’d won.”

* * *

_Thomas_

By the time he registered that the pounding he heard was here, _now_ —present day and not the butts of rifles against the metal bars of their cages—Thomas had sweated through his T-shirt and soaked the sheet beneath him.

He sat forward in a rush, breath hammering through his dry, parted lips, and rubbed his short, black hair with the flat of his hand. He blinked sweat from his eyes, looking around his dimly lit bedroom, trying to bring it into focus.

“Magnum open the bloody door,” he heard Higgins bellow, her accent somehow even more pronounced in its irritation. “I do _not_ have time to play the messenger.”

Frowning, Magnum climbed from his bed, reaching back between his shoulder blades and pulled off his sweat-soaked T-shirt, dropping it into a pile on the floor. He untwisted his cargo shorts, then spied a semi-clean button-up Hawaiian shirt hanging on the back of a chair and grabbed it as he made his way toward the door. Despite the mental trip down nightmare lane, the sleep _had_ done him a bit of good: the spike in his head had turned into more of a dull roar, surpassed only by the irate woman currently slapping the flat of her hand against his door.

He wondered briefly why she bothered waiting for him to open this time when before she’d managed to simply let herself in and woke him up. As he closed his hand around the doorknob, he realized he’d answered his own question.

“It’s about time!” Higgins exclaimed when he opened the door, not even bothering to look at him as she stormed past and dropped an overstuffed envelope on the kitchen counter. “You do have an address, Magnum,” she continued. “I do not appreciate having to stop my work to sign special delivery packages for—” She froze as she turned to glare at him, the ice in her eyes cracking and turning to naked surprise. “What the hell happened to you?!”

Thomas quickly buttoned his shirt the rest of the way, then shoved a hand through his sleep-matted hair.

“Nothing.”

He moved past her, ignoring the way the air around her practically shimmered with emotions ranging from utter irritation to confused worry. He grabbed up the envelope.

“Who did you say dropped this off?” He looked back over his shoulder at her.

“It came by special delivery,” she crossed one arm over her stomach and rested the elbow of the other on her wrist waving her hand at him, “and don’t think you’re going to explain away all of this with a sullen ‘nothing’.”

Thomas just shook his head. He really didn’t feel up to explaining it all to her in that moment—and he didn’t want her probing too closely and realizing the Ferrari hadn’t come home with him. He gave her a nonchalant shrug as he opened the envelope.

“Got bit roughed up by—” He froze. It was his wallet and phone.

“Magnum?”

“What delivery service?” he asked, his voice breaking off at the edges. When she didn’t reply, he looked up at her sharply. “Higgins. What delivery service?”

“I didn’t make note—”

“Was it legit?”

“I’m sorry?”

He took a step toward her and saw her square her shoulders in surprise. “The service—was it a legit service? Did they do anything else? Touch anything? Say anything to you?”

Juliet swallowed, the expression on her face defrosting into a realization that he was absolutely serious. “No, they didn’t touch anything else, nor did they actually enter the house. The only thing they said was for me to sign on a clipboard, and then handed me the package. I believe it was Quicksilver—that bike service that’s all over the island.”

Thomas nodded, dumping his wallet on the counter and turning on his phone. He could feel his heart pounding at the base of his throat as he scrolled through the information. It didn’t appear as though anything was changed, however….

He immediately dialed Meghan Iona’s number.

“Magnum, what—”

He held up a hand to silence Higgins when Meghan answered.

“Are you and your boys okay?” he asked without bothering with a greeting. If Devlin Iona had his phone all this time, he knew Meghan hired him.

_“Y-yes,”_ Meghan’s stutter was one of surprise, not fear, and Thomas felt his shoulders relax by a slim margin. _“We are at the airport. I left a note for Dev that we were going to my Aunt’s.”_

“Go somewhere else,” Thomas ordered.

_“Where?”_

“I don’t care,” Thomas shook his head, gripping the back of his neck as he paced. He’d almost forgotten Higgins was still in the room and nearly ran into her before rotating away. “He took my phone, Meghan, and he just returned it to me, which means—”

He heard Meghan’s gasp through the line. _“He knows.”_

“Can you go to your father for protection?”

_“Not without proof,”_ Meghan lamented. _“He’ll just push me to reconcile.”_

Thomas pinched the bridge of his nose. “I’d have you come here, but—”

_“He knows where you live,”_ Meghan finished for him.

“Kumu,” Higgins suddenly said. Thomas looked up, expecting to see the woman entering the guest house. “No one knows she’s affiliated with you or with Robin Masters. Your friend can go there.”

Thomas nodded, gratitude washing over him. “Meghan, I’m going to send you to a friend, okay? You need to stay there until Detective Gordon Katsumoto contacts you that it’s safe. Can you do that?”

_“Y-yes,”_ Meghan agreed. _“Mr. Magnum, I’m so sorry—”_

But Thomas was already shaking his head. “Don’t apologize. You did nothing wrong. You hear me on that?”

_“Yes, I hear you,”_ Meghan replied.

“I’ll text you the location,” Thomas told her, listening as Juliet called Kumu from the house land line to let her know that she was about to have guests.

With Meghan squared away, Thomas looked through his wallet, but couldn’t see anything missing. He heard Juliet hang up with Kumu and felt her eyes on him, but stayed staring at the counter, resolutely unwilling to go into a long-winded explanation.

“You’re really not going to tell me what happened?” Juliet exclaimed. “Or why I just helped you?”

Thomas turned to face her, forcing himself not to run his tongue over his split lip. “You didn’t help me; you helped a family on the run from a dangerous man.”

“Oh, brilliant, Magnum,” Juliet tossed her hands in the air. “And now we’ve put Kumu in danger.”

“She’s fine,” Thomas reassured, moving to the opened doorway leading to the lanai. “I’ve already called Katsumoto.”

“So, that’s it then, is it?” He heard Juliet’s hand come down against her leg once more. “You’re just going to shut me out?”

“I’m not shutting you out,” Thomas protested. He half turned toward her. “I’m handling my own business—isn’t that what you keep insisting I do?”

He could see her eyebrows bounce up at that and she exhaled sharply, then moved toward the front door.

“Better late than never, I suppose,” she muttered, pulling the door shut behind her.

Thomas let out a breath. He needed to call Katsumoto to find out what they discovered at the house. When he glanced at the clock, he was surprised to find that it was the middle of the afternoon. His little nap had eaten up quite a few hours.

With a vocal groan of frustration, he rubbed at his bruised face, then turned on his heel and headed for his bathroom and the shower. He needed to get rid of the remnants of that dream and get ready to face what came next. Twenty minutes later, he was in clean clothes and heading back out to the kitchen where he left his phone.

Picking it up to call Katsumoto, he frowned at a text message from an unfamiliar number. When he opened it, his blood seemed to still in his veins.

It was a picture of Rick talking to a customer at the club. It was clearly from a telephoto lens—or the site of a sniper rifle. He swallowed hard, staring at his phone in shock and confusion. Just then, it buzzed in his hand and another text from the same number came through, this one of TC shoulder-deep in the engine of his Island Hopper helicopter.

“You son of a bitch,” Thomas muttered.

When the phone buzzed again, he was already moving. This time, it was of Juliet, in one of her impossible yoga poses under the pagoda. Thomas yanked open the door of the guest house and stepped out onto the lawn. He looked over, already knowing what he would see: Juliet doing yoga in the pagoda.

His eyes scanned the surrounding area, trying to pinpoint where someone might be set up to site in on her quite that well. It could be from a yacht out in the ocean for all he knew—it was entirely possible to site in from that far.

“Higgins!” he called. She resolutely ignored him. “Higgy, time to come inside.”

At that she looked over at him, a fierce frown pulling her eyebrows low. “I will not be summoned like a recalcitrant child late for dinner, thank you very much.”

Thomas began to stalk toward her. Until he could find where that sniper’s nest was, she goddamn better _stay_ inside.

“Juliet, I’m not joking around,” he said, his voice harsher than he’d ever used with her…on purpose.

“You’ll find I don’t care one way or the other, Magnum,” she snapped back at him, pressing her hands flat against the wood and arching her back.

Thomas’ phone buzzed again. This time, not only could he see himself in the image—clearly taken from just moments ago—but also the crosshairs of a rifle. He moved on instinct, running for the pagoda and leaping onto the platform, scooping Higgins up around the waist and pulling her with him to the ground on the other side of the pagoda in one swift move, her yelp of protest reverberating in his ear.

“What in the _bloody_ hell do you think you are doing?”

“Stay down,” he ordered, keeping his arm across her shoulder.

“I most certainly will not,” she shot back, hooking her leg around his and slamming the heel of her hand against his ribs, flipping him over.

The breath left his body as her punch crashed against his already bruised torso. Thankfully, she didn’t stand right away, staying in a perfectly balanced crouch and staring at him with an unreadable expression.

“What is going on with you?”

“Noth—” he started to wheeze, but she cut him off.

“Do you want me to tell you what I think is happening?” She asked, not waiting for an answer. “I think you are caught in an emotional riptide stemming not only from having never dealt with the loss of your friend, but also being recently reminded of your time in the Korengal Valley, thanks to the Amanda Sato case, and as a result you are behaving recklessly and blowing situations out of proportion.”

Thomas gaped at her. How she could be so right and so wrong at the same time was astounding to him. He pulled in a trembling breath.

“That’s not it,” he tried, his hand pressed against his bruised side. “There’s a case—”

“Oh, like the case where you came home with the Ferrari looking as though you drove it through a tar pit?”

He winced. She frowned.

“Wait…where _is_ the Ferrari?”

Thomas sat up, looking at his phone, then looking around. It hadn’t buzzed again, which meant, he thought, that they felt their message had gotten through: _we know what you care about and we can get to it at any time._

“It’s getting repaired,” he managed, finally getting his breath back.

She pushed to her feet and Thomas stood up quickly, eyes darting along the edge of the beach, into the trees, trying to see the glint of sun off a barrel or a scope. There was nothing.

“Repaired…from what, Magnum?”

He waved her off, moving around so that he was between her and what felt like way too much open space.

“Nothing major,” he replied. “I have a friend of mine on it.”

“Does this friend have a name?” She arched an eyebrow at him. She was rather particular about who serviced Robin’s cars.

“Shep,” Thomas said, moving toward her and miraculously managing to herd her toward the house, distracted as she was by the idea that someone she hadn’t personally vetted was repairing the Ferrari. “Don’t worry—he’s good people.”

“Yes, but is he a good _mechanic_?” She muttered heading toward the main house.

Thomas followed her. “The car will be fine, Higgy.”

She pulled a water bottle from the fridge, paused, then grabbed another one and handed it to him. “But will you?”

Before he could answer, his phone rang. He flinched so hard he crunched the water bottle in his hand. Ignoring Higgins’ arched eyebrow, he answered the call.

“Magnum.”

_“I don’t know what your game is, but I don’t appreciate getting played.”_

Thomas blinked, frowning at the tone of Katsumoto’s voice.

“What are you talking about?”

_“I had a crew go to that house you told me about,”_ Katsumoto informed him. _“Was thinking by your description it could be this group both HPD and 5-0 have been chasing for a few months. Pulled out all the stops, even called 5-0. On a maybe.”_

Thomas’ frown deepened. He could already tell he wasn’t going to like this story. “And? What’d you find?”

_“Nothing.”_

“Wait—what? What do you mean ‘nothing’?”

_“Not many ways to define that word, Magnum,”_ Katsumoto snapped at him. _“House was clean. CSU didn’t even pick up any trace evidence that anything had even been there.”_

“That’s not possible.”

_“Thought maybe you got the house number wrong, so we checked out two others located nearby also listed by the same realtor—both empty, both clean.”_

“I’m telling you,” Thomas began to pace again, rubbing the back of his neck distractedly. He moved around Higgins, his whole focus on what Katsumoto was saying. “They had a crate of rifles—I saw at least one M27 IAR and maybe an HK417. Did you check the wall? The girl was strapped to the wall!”

_“We checked everything,”_ Katsumoto said, sounding more tired, less pissed. Thomas could hear distraction in his voice, then, _“Look…maybe you thought you saw something. You said you were jumped. Maybe with a concussion—”_

Thomas looked sharply at Juliet and saw that she was texting someone.

“I’m not making this shit up,” Thomas barked, speaking to both. “I know what I saw, dammit. And now a woman and her kids are in danger.”

_“Look, Magnum,”_ Katsumoto sighed. _“Get some rest. Heal up. Go…talk to someone. Just…don’t call me unless you really got something going on.”_

Thomas didn’t wait for Katsumoto to hang on up on him this time—he disconnected the call and advanced on Higgins. The blonde lowered her phone and calmly looked up at him, unintimidated by his anger.

“What are you texting him?”

Juliet looked blandly back at him. “I simply told him that you were going through a rough time and had been beaten up—”

“I’m not crazy,” Thomas practically growled, curling his hands into fists at his sides. He felt like he was holding himself back—not from striking her, he’d never do that, but from a primal scream that would have left her cowering.

“I didn’t say you were,” Juliet replied calmly. “But you’re acting…unlike yourself.”

Thomas rubbed at his short hair, turning away from her in frustration. “Just because I’m not asking you guys for favors doesn’t mean I’m acting unlike myself.”

Juliet tilted her head. “It does, actually, when that’s all I’ve known of you since the day we met.”

Thomas stared at her for several seconds, eyes narrowed as he tried to see around the Master Spy persona she was suddenly showing him. After a beat, he realized he didn’t care. She was going to think what she wanted, and it was on him if anything happened to Meghan Iona or her sons—or for that matter Rick, TC, and Higgins—because of Devlin Iona’s crew.

Katsumoto wanted something real? He’d give him something real.

“Fine, then,” he said, narrowed eyes still on her face. “I need a favor. Keys to another car and a camera.”

“You have to be insane if you think I’m going to let you—”

Thomas tilted his head slightly, crossing his arms over his chest. “I was actually just asking as a courtesy. I am going to take one of the other cars and borrow Robin’s camera.”

That got her back up. She crossed her arms, her posture matching his. “What’s wrong with your camera?”

“The imaginary bad guys who are dealing pretend drugs and fake beat me up took it,” he fired back.

At that, she sighed, shoulders sagging a little, “Look, Magnum, I’m not saying nothing happened to you—the evidence is written all over your face—”

“Well, thanks for giving me that,” he grumbled, moving away from her and toward the main door, before pausing and half-turning back toward her. “Y’know, if you didn’t believe me, how come you helped me get Meghan and her kids to Kumu?”

The question stumped her slightly. He watched her search for a corner of solid ground before answering. “Because whatever else you are, Magnum, you are a good man, and you care about people. I could tell there was genuine worry in your voice as you spoke to your friend.”

“She’s not a friend,” he corrected, “she’s a client, and because of me, her husband knows she hired a private investigator.” He sighed, rubbing his neck and turned back to the door. “And if I don’t get some hard evidence for Katsumoto, she’s going to be in a world of trouble.”

He tugged open the door.

“Where are you going?” Juliet demanded.

“Don’t worry about it,” he shot back.

“I thought you needed a camera?” she started toward the door.

He glanced back at her. “I’ll just use my phone.”

“Magnum—”

He paused in the doorway, half-turning toward her. “Look, I get it. You have doubts. It’s fine. But I’ve been a SEAL for a long time, and I know when something feels dangerous.”

“You were a SEAL,” Juliet said softly.

He blinked at her. “What?”

“You _were_ a SEAL,” she repeated. “You’re not anymore.”

He shook his head at her, brows furrowed. What did that have to do with anything? “Whatever, it doesn’t matter. What matters is that a lot of people are going to get hurt because of me and I can’t let that happen again.”

“Magnum, you need to take a moment—”

At that he turned to face her, a finger pointed toward her face, heat and pain shimmering just beneath his skin. He was two heartbeats from grabbing her narrow wrist and shaking her for lack of the ability to affect any other kind of change.

“Don’t tell me what I need to do, Juliet,” he stated, his voice clipped and controlled. “I know you were MI6 and that gives you some kind of sixth sense when it comes to situations, but I know _people_. I’ve seen them as evil as they come. I’ve seen their darkness and cruelty and I know when they’re a powder keg about to blow.”

Juliet seemed to sink back into her heels, and he saw a look settle into her eyes that said she was about to regain control of a situation that had quickly gotten out of her control. Fuck that. He wasn’t about to be controlled, not now. Not when some asshole had his sniper sights on his friends. Not when a woman and her kids could get killed by a douchebag in a tailored suit.

He wasn’t going to be the reason for any more pain.

_No mas._

“Too many people have been hurt because of me,” he said, dropping his hand, “and I’m not going to let this guy add red to my ledger.”

He turned on his heel and walked away, shutting the door behind him, uncaring if it was in her face or not. He headed to the guest house and found one of his spare weapons, checked to make sure the clip was full, then secured it in his back waistband. Next, he grabbed a knife his mother had given him when he graduated from BUD/s and slid that into the pocket of his cargo shorts.

Strapping his father’s watch around his wrist, he slipped his phone into his back pocket and headed from the guest house to the garage. Making his way to what Robin had affectionately called the corral, he scanned the keys hanging in the lock box and selected ones for the most unobtrusive vehicle he could find: a navy-blue Lamborghini SUV.

“You do love your toys,” he murmured affectionately about his benefactor.

Locating the car, he headed toward the gate, glancing once in his rear-view mirror, fully expecting to see an irate Brit standing in the lot, hands on hips, cloaked in disapproval. It was almost a let-down to see nothing at all behind him.

Katsumoto had gone to the house that was third on Meghan’s list—and said they checked out two others. But Thomas had four more houses on his list. And he was ready to scour each one.

Anger narrowed his focus—at Higgins, at Iona…at himself. He wasn’t sure. He was just _angry_ and it seemed to burn just beneath his skin like a white-hot fuel, masking any lingering aches and pain from the beating he took yesterday.

He was tired of being the reason others were hurt—getting his friends caught and tortured by the Taliban had been bad enough. He had to be vigilant from now on. He tightened his grip on the SUV’s steering wheel as he drove up a rather sharp series of switchbacks, reminding himself that he wasn’t driving the Ferrari and needed to stay aware.

He couldn’t get lost in his head; he might not come back out again.

The first of the unchecked houses was a bust—at most it looked like some kids had broken in and used it as a hot box at one point. Thomas mapped out the locations of the final three on his GPS and decided to go to the one furthest out first and work his way back. The road ran along a mountain, one side hugging a cliff face, the other a steep drop-off he wouldn’t want to encounter in the dark. It reminded him that he definitely wasn’t a native of this island—there was a lot out here he didn’t know, and it could all kill him before he could remind nature that he was a Navy SEAL.

Parking along the roadside, keeping the SUV pointed downhill with the driver’s side door easily accessible if he needed another quick escape, Thomas got out of the car and headed down another long, winding driveway. His gut kicked up a warning just before he saw the lights in the house.

“Jackpot.”

He pulled out his cell phone; one bar.

He texted the address—no message—to Katsumoto, then cursed when the red exclamation point and the dreaded _not delivered_ warning showed up. He’d have to try again. Pulling his weapon, and keeping his phone out, he opened the message to Katsumoto again, then crept up to where a group of black SUVs were parked. He took pictures of the license plates as he made his way toward the front of the house.

Fully expecting to see a guard out front after what happened the last time, he shook his head at the audacity of this guy when he saw the front porch clear and two of the front windows open. Moving with practiced stealth, he made his way to the window and edged up until he could just barely see inside.

Drugs, weapons—no traumatized girl this time, but, hey, it’d been an off week.

Making sure his phone was silenced, Thomas angled it over the windowsill and snapped as many images as he could, all of them inserted into the text to Katsumoto. He hit send again but got the red error once more. Afraid the pictures wouldn’t be enough, Thomas moved around to the back of the house thinking to grab some video at least.

He pulled up short when he smelled cigarette smoke. Darting a look around the corner of the house, he realized _this_ is where the guard went—he’d just gotten extremely lucky ealier. A voice broke in over a walkie-talkie strapped to the guy’s belt.

Thomas pressed himself against the wall as flat as possible and held his breath.

_“Got a parked vehicle here, boss.”_

“Plates?”

_“Says Robin 5.”_

Thomas closed his eyes.

“What like the Ferrari?”

_“That was Robin 2.”_

The man at the back of the house was silent just long enough.

_“But…uh, yeah. Like the Ferrari.”_

“That little fucker’s around here somewhere. Spread out, boys.”

_“What you want me to do with this SUV?”_

“Shove it off the cliff—that bastard won’t need it when we’re done with him.”

_“Roger that.”_

Thomas tucked his phone into his back pocket, then lifted his weapon in ready position. The backyard guard headed inside and shouted for Devlin. He heard weapons—several of them, by the sound of it—being grabbed, loaded, with ammo being chambered.

He was going to have to run for it.

Darting his eyes around the densely covered surroundings, he knew the quickest way to the road was to the west, but there were at least two armed men that way. Several more were seconds from piling out of the house. To the south was the mountain, which left north or east and all he could see was jungle and trees.

_It’s not like you ain’t done this before, amigo,_ Nuzo’s voice suddenly whispered in his ear. _You just survived two days in that jungle, you can do it again_.

With that encouragement, Thomas broke for the trees. He heard shouts following him, then the whistle and crack of weapons fired. He turned as he ran and fired back, three quick bursts, just to let them know he wasn’t messing around this time. Rotating forward once more he lifted an arm to ward off the low-hanging palm leaves and web-like vines as he ran.

Bullets burned the air around him, whistling and smacking against the trees. He heard shouts and orders, but kept running, zigzagging through the foliage, jumping over fallen trees and thick roots. He almost didn’t feel the punch at his back, the tug at his side.

_Almost_.

As it was, it spun him just enough he lost his footing and crashed, hard, against the jungle floor, skidding along his shoulder a bit before scrambling once more to his feet and moving forward. His breath hitched, his eyes blurred, but he ran on until the burn of bullets had faded, and the voices were dim echoes.

They were still after him—he knew that—but for now, at least, he’d lost them. He pressed his back against a large Banyan tree, trying desperately to catch his breath. His legs shook and he looked back around the trunk. Not seeing anyone immediately, he allowed himself to sink to the ground, his side shooting a surprising, fresh pain up to his shoulder and into his jaw.

“ _Ahh_ …son of a bitch,” he muttered, looking down at his side.

There was an alarming amount of red staining his shirt. Gingerly, he felt around to his back and realized by the wetness there it was a through-and-through.

“Okay, good news…,” he gasped softly, “no bullet. Bad news…lots of blood.”

Tucking his weapon into his shorts, he pulled out his cell phone with a shaking, blood-covered hand. No reception.

“Fuck,” he whispered. “Now what, Nuzo?”

_Focus on what can kill you now_ , he heard his friend’s New York accent reply, so clear he was tempted to look around for him.

Swallowing, he shrugged out of his button-up shirt, biting his lip to keep the cry of pain limited to a muted whimper.

“Son of a _bitch_ this hurts,” he gasped.

Digging his knife out of his pocket, he cut two strips from one side of his shirt and then wadding the rest up into as much of a pressure bandage as a Hawaiian shirt could become. Tying the strips around his waist, he collapsed back against the Banyan, the bark of the tree digging into this now-bare skin.

If he could get to the road, get reception, he’d be okay.

“Found blood, boss!

“Shit,” Thomas muttered when the voice of Backyard Bad Guy reached his ears much too close for his comfort.

Using the tree to pull himself to his feet, Thomas pressed a hand to his bleeding side and looked around for an escape route. When the trees started to blur together, he closed his eyes, trying to breathe as deeply as his wound would allow.

“Broken branches here.”

“He’s around here somewhere, boys.”

Thomas staggered forward, two things crystal clear in his mind: he had to stay ahead of those voices, and he was in a lot of trouble.


	3. Chapter 3

No man is an island, of this I know  
But can you see, or  
Or maybe you were the ocean when I was just a stone  
 _\- Black Flies_ , Ben Howard

_Rick_

Some things he just knew.

Like how to tease up a smile on a tired customer’s face, or when the bartender was shorting the till, or how to make a killer martini. Growing up, Rick had always been able to get people to see things his way simply by paying attention. Everyone had tells—and he learned at a young age that if he could discover them, he’d get what he needed and, more often than not, what he _wanted_ as well.

This skill had served him well in school, kept him safe in the Marines, kept him alive in the Korengal. He’d been able to watch his friends, know when they were close to tapping out, know how to bring them back from the edge—all except for Thomas.

It wasn’t that Thomas didn’t have his tells—the man was a freaking book Rick would never stop reading. But he was like mercury. No matter what Rick did, Thomas was able to side-step the care, turning it around until the younger man was suddenly supporting _him_. It was disconcerting. And challenging.

He loved a good challenge.

Rick had lost the last member of his family before he’d shipped out for Afghanistan. Unless he counted Ice Pick, which he absolutely did…but that was different. Ice Pick was chosen.

It hit him with a strange kind of sorrow—almost like he knew he was _supposed_ to be sad, but the only thing that he was really left with was the taste of loneliness in the back of his throat. He’d really been too young to know his mother and his father had been…complicated. No siblings, no grandparents.

The odd sense of being truly alone in the world had not lasted long. He’d found the Marines, he’d found a brotherhood, and he’d found TC, Nuzo, and Thomas. Anchoring himself in their companionship centered him. Defined him.

He’d meant what he’d said to Higgins—though, he couldn’t believe he’d confessed that to Juliet Freaking Higgins of all people. If Thomas hadn’t survived that camp, Rich hadn’t wanted to, either. There was something compelling about the energy that shimmered around Thomas Magnum. Something that captured Rick like no other friendship or relationship ever had.

It gave Rick purpose. Direction. Allowed him to continually suck the marrow from life while not losing the edge that had kept him alive in the dark.

Thomas repeatedly threw himself into any and every situation—good or bad. He was fully committed to every emotion and would frequently put himself at the bottom of the list if it meant someone else would be safe or happy. And because of that, Rick felt the need to keep an eye on him.

Because there were some things he just knew.

Like the fact that Thomas _wasn’t_ okay—no matter what his grin might try to make them believe—and hadn’t been okay since he helped find Amanda Sato’s kidnapper. He knew the guy wasn’t sleeping, that he was watching them all with an unusual hyper-vigilance, and that there was something eating away at him like acid in his heart.

It was the kind of thing therapy was supposed to help, but none of them had really taken to the typical group counseling recommended to them when they were in Germany healing up from what the Taliban had put them through. It was too hard to talk about with anyone who hadn’t been there. They’d figured as long as they had each other—as long as they were watching out for each other—they’d be okay.

Now, though, Rick wondered if they’d missed something with Thomas.

Glancing up at the clock on the wall, he sighed, picking up his phone with a frown and selecting TC’s name.

_“What’s up, my brother?”_

Rick leaned a hip against the bar top, tugging up the leg of his pink pants and resting a Converse-covered foot on the wrung of the barstool next to him. His garish Hawaiian shirt belied a sense of joy he hadn’t truly felt in weeks.

“You heard from Thomas today?”

_“Nah,”_ TC replied, sighing with mild irritation. _“Was about to call him on it, too.”_

“What do you mean?”

He heard something metallic clank in the background. The sound of a tool against an engine. Of TC living his dream. It sounded like forced peace.

_“He was supposed to meet me this morning to help with some stuff around here—payback for some of those ‘free tours’ he’s so generous with.”_

Rick’s frown deepened. “Yeah, same.”

_“What, he owe you time?”_

“Promised to cover a bar shift this afternoon to make up for the free drinks.”

Rick practically felt TC pull closer to the phone.

_“What are you thinking?”_

“Well, I’m not thinking he blew us off.”

_“He’s been trying awful hard to convince us everything’s good.”_

“Too hard.”

_“You call Higgy?”_

Rick shook his head. She wouldn’t get it. There was too much history here she didn’t understand. She assumed too much and didn’t see enough.

“I need eyes on him, man.”

_“I hear you—I’ll leave now to get you.”_

“Thanks, TC.”

_“Hey…gotta take care of our boy, yeah?”_

“Yeah.”

The ride to Robin’s Nest was quiet, both men caught up in their own heads. Rick often wondered what TC thought about Robin’s having offered Thomas the live-in security consultant position. They never really talked about it once they got to the island. It had almost been an unspoken agreement between he, TC, and Nuzo that if anyone needed this chance, it was Thomas.

Once it was clear they were all coming home alive, Rick knew he’d land on his feet—he always did, no matter the situation. TC had been mentally building his business plan since before they escaped. Nuzo had Lara and a new baby already on the island. Before they’d left Germany, the three men had security and a future in Hawaii.

Thomas, though…after surviving by pure stubbornness, he’d been gutted by the knowledge that his mother had died when he was in the camp. Going back to his hometown in Virginia wasn’t a possibility, and there was a fragility about him they’d all seen but hadn’t wanted call attention to for fear that speaking the thing would make it real.

Robin Masters was a daring journalist, but while fearlessness might make for a good story, it had often put those on his security detail in a bit of a bind. Nine times out of ten, that detail included Thomas—and the SEAL had pulled Robin’s ass out of some hairy situations multiple times before the Korengal happened to all of them.

It hadn’t surprised any of them that the writer had decided to base the hero of his best-selling series on Thomas. Not after what Thomas had gone through to keep Robin alive. To keep _all of them_ alive.

In gratitude for not only saving his ass, but for making him a goddamn billionaire, Robin hadn’t hesitated to offer Thomas a place to live and a ready-made job when he found out they were alive. It had taken them a bit to convince Thomas to accept. Regardless of his penchant for complaining about being relegated to a sidekick in Robin’s novels, Rick would be forever grateful to the man for seeing the vulnerability in their friend—and recognizing that Thomas needed time to fix the broken pieces inside him.

“Freaking Robin Masters,” TC suddenly muttered beside him as they pulled through the gate after punching in the code.

Rick jumped slightly—both from the sudden sound of his voice and from the earie echo of his thoughts. Maybe TC just knew things, too.

“Want to share with the class?” Rick prodded.

“Just think it every time I drive through these gates,” TC said, then chuckled low and slow. “While we were counting the days between beatings in that damn camp, Masters was cashing in on the White Knight.”

“He didn’t know where we were,” Rick automatically replied—a fact he found himself having to repeat to remind himself when he got low. “Nothing he could have done.”

“Nah, I know,” TC sighed, pulling to a stop and shoving the van into park. “Just…sometimes makes me think.”

“You mean about where our lives would be today if we hadn’t….”

“Yeah,” TC said quietly. “Would we all be on this island? Would we all still be friends?”

“Would Nuzo still be alive?”

They sat for a beat in silence, then TC opened his door and stepped out without a word, Rick following. They made their way to the guest house, moving around to the lanai to let themselves in.

“Thomas?” Rick called, moving through the living area to the kitchen.

“Yo! T.M.!” TC hollered, moving back to the bedroom.

They met back at the lanai. Rick lifted his hands out to his sides.

“You see the Ferrari when we pulled in?”

TC shook his head, then pulled out his phone, trying Thomas’ number again. “Keeps going to voicemail,” he grumbled.

“Yeah, same.” Rick frowned. “Let’s see what Higgins knows.”

TC nodded and the two set out for the main house. When Higgins opened the door to them, Rick felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end.

“Gents,” she greeted, her tone clipped. “I’m afraid you missed him.”

“How long ago did he leave?” Rick asked.

“Over an hour,” she sighed, then stepped back to let them in, British politeness overruling whatever irritation had her jaw set in a hard line. “And he was in a state.”

“A _state_?” Rick repeated turning to face her. “Care to elaborate?”

Juliet sighed, crossing her arms over her chest. “He insisted a client of his was in danger, despite Katsumoto informing him that he’d found nothing at an address Magnum gave him. He yelled at me and then stormed out, claiming that too many people had been hurt because of him,” she flopped her hands at her sides in a helpless gesture. “Honestly, if he hadn’t already been basically one big bruise, I was sorely tempted to hit him myself.”

“Whoa,” Rick held out a hand, frowning as he processed her words, cold fingers creeping up his spine. “Back up—he was beaten up?”

Juliet nodded, but her look of irritation didn’t waver. “It was clear he’d gotten into some kind of altercation, but he refused to give me any details.”

“ _How_ beaten up?” Rick stepped forward, his instincts on point. He felt like he was just given a target, but someone had stolen his rifle. He could see TC eyeing him off to the side, but ignored his big friend for a moment, intent on details.

“His face was bruised and cut—if I had to guess, I would say fist-fight—and he was favoring his ribs. Again. By the way he was going on about people being hurt, I would also guess a concussion.”

“You suspected he had a concussion and you still let him leave?” Rick challenged.

“Easy, Rick—” TC started.

Juliet turned to face Rick, her hands on her narrow hips. “And just what would you have me do?”

“Stop him!” Rick shot back, stepping into her personal space, feeling his face grow hot from indignation. “You’re freaking MI6—I’m sure you know how.”

“You didn’t see him,” Juliet snapped back. “He acted as though he was on a mission—and I am well aware the man was a Navy SEAL, thank you very much.”

“A _wounded_ Navy SEAL—” Rick practically shouted, stopping only because TC put a hand on his chest and gently applied pressure until he took a breath and three steps back.

He looked up at TC’s calm dark eyes, only then realizing how far off track he’d allowed his emotions to run.

“You good?” TC asked, his voice low. “Or do we need to take a walk?”

“I’m good,” Rick promised, meeting TC’s gaze squarely, then nodded.

TC turned back to Juliet. “Sorry, Higgy,” he offered. “There’s a lot of history with Thomas at play here.”

Juliet had taken a step back herself and crossed her arms once more. “Apparently.”

Rick moved to prop himself up on the edge of the couch. “He’s just…he’s shit at taking care of himself,” he said honestly. “He was _literally_ dying and he still paid more attention to us.”

“What do you—”

“In the camp,” TC elaborated.

“Oh,” Juliet replied and practically deflated before their eyes. “Look…I admit that I may have been…a bit of an asshole.”

Rick arched an eyebrow. “This is new.”

Juliet threw her hands up again in tell Rick was beginning to associate with _Thomas Magnum takes the prize for Most Frustrating Human_.

“He simply…he pushes all of my buttons; do you know what I mean?”

“Yes,” Rick and TC replied immediately and in unison.

“I find myself losing track of the fact that I am a grown, rational adult, and simply want to prove him wrong or put him in his place.”

Rick glanced at TC, then they looked back at Juliet. “We get it,” they replied together.

Juliet looked at them. “And yet…you both would do anything for him. Literally _anything._ I’ve seen it, I just…don’t know that I understand it.”

“There’s really no way you could,” Rick said, letting her off the hook with his tone and sinking a bit deeper against the edge of the couch. “Not with the person he’s let you see.”

“The person he’s _let_ me see?” Juliet tilted her head.

“There are many sides to our boy,” TC said, dropping down into a chair across from Rick. “And he’s only gonna let you see the one that allows him to control how close you get to him.”

Rick watched as Juliet chewed on that for a beat.

“I’m not sure I like the insinuation that he’s smart enough to manipulate me like that.”

“Ha! Oh, he’s smart enough,” Rick chuffed. “You ever wonder why Robin picked ‘security consultant’ out of all the possible jobs he could have offered Thomas?”

Juliet arched a brow.

“The man misses _nothing_ ,” TC informed her. “Dude walks into a room and the first thing he sees is all four corners.”

“I have observed his ability to notice and remember minute details. Once or twice,” Juliet acquiesced.

“And he speaks at least four languages,” Rick revealed.

“That we know of,” TC added. He glanced at Rick. “I think I discovered he knew Korean a few weeks back.”

“Wouldn’t surprise me,” Rick shrugged.

Juliet sighed. “I don’t…why on earth would he not want people—want _me_ —to know this about him?”

“Think about it,” Rick tipped his chin down. “It’s not like you introduced yourself as former MI6 when we first met you.”

“No, of course not,” Juliet sighed, “but he purposely allows me to think him a…a rogue and a playboy.”

“Higgy, no offense,” TC rumbled, “but you drew those conclusions on your own. All Thomas did was not correct you.”

Juliet sat back on her heels, processing that response for a moment. “What did you mean about him not taking care of himself?”

The way she asked gave Rick the feeling she was trying to put a few pieces back into the puzzle that was Thomas in her mind.

He decided to give her an example.

* * *

_Korengal, 2015,_ _Rick_

He would have lost track of time if it hadn’t been for Nuzo, their human clock.

The feisty Italian had started etching hatch marks in their cells from day one. Their first location had been stone cells carved out of the ruins of older cities. The Russian occupation of the country had long ago established the fact that the current buildings of today were built upon the skeletons of yesterday, which offered a trove of IED hide-aways and places to store prisoners.

Those first days blended a bit…until the moment Thomas peered through a crack in the wall and saw someone who’d once been a friend, realizing they’d been betrayed. From that moment forward, it felt like every time the slant of sunlight crossed from one cell to another their lives started crackling at the edges.

When they were moved to the caves, there was no way to discern day from night. There was simply awake and asleep—and after one or another was hauled away for interrogation, those ways of keeping time became rather subjective. So, Nuzo began to keep track by the times they were fed, assessing it to be roughly once in a twenty-four-hour period.

As it turned out, he’d ended up only being a few days off in his final count.

He’d say the latest number out loud to them when they were all awake and when they were moved, as they often were when the location of the camp was close to being discovered, he would use Thomas’ small pocket knife—which he’d only been able to keep hold of because they kept it constantly changing hands—to carve the last number he’d told them on the wall and start the hatch marks from there.

That’s how Rick knew it had been five weeks since they’d last seen Thomas—the longest he’d been away from them.

It was the third time they’d taken him. The first time had been for nine days. The second for twenty-two. Each time Rick was convinced they weren’t getting him back, and each time Thomas survived to be returned to them.

This time, no one was really sure why they’d grabbed him—TC was convinced they just liked to torture him, Nuzo thought it had something to do with why they were captured in the first place, but Rick knew it was because Thomas refused to fall in line. He fearlessly poked the bear—refusing to answer questions when interrogated, or worse quoting song lyrics or movie lines in Dari or Pashto just to mess with their heads. He resisted their control, their demand for submission, any way he could.

Thomas’ resistance was Rick’s salvation. If Thomas had ever once caved, Rick knew he would have died inside, and that would have been his end.

Five weeks.

They’d almost gotten used to waking up without him in their small space, without hearing him breathe along with them. Without listening as he sang classic rock off-key in Spanish because it amused Nuzo. Or watching as he created chess boards with various-sized stone chips.

There was an intimacy that came with being trapped with three other men in a space too small to stand or stretch out. A way of allowing for the human condition—a latrine, a bed space, a nightmare—that only those who have been through similar could relate to. Keeping Thomas away from them for five weeks threw off their balance; returning him to them did it all over again.

And Rick suspected that was exactly why they did it. When Thomas came back that time, Rick was terrified about how long they’d take him the next time. And of what it would do to their will to survive.

Thomas wasn’t a big guy—shorter and slighter than Rick—but he’d always been solidly built and muscular enough to handle the physical demands of the Teams. When their captors dragged him back into the main holding space after his five-week sentence was complete, Rick had been shocked by how thin the man was.

His black hair was longer than it had ever been, his beard had grown in, making him look much older than Rick knew him to be, and his ribs were visible beneath the stretched cotton of his thin T-shirt. Rick couldn’t help it—he cried out in protest when the guards threw Thomas to the ground just outside their cage.

_“Get back, get back!”_ One guard shouted in Dari, banging the butt of his rifle against the cage. Rick might not have known what the guard was saying, but he knew by now what he meant.

Thomas pushed to his hands and knees, coughing a wet, hacking sound as he caught his breath.

“Leave him alone!” Rick yelled, gripping the bars in his fists and thrusting his face against the opening as far as he could. “Back the fuck off!”

“Rick,” Thomas gasped. “Don’t—”

Before Thomas could finish his sentence, the guard pointed the business end of his rifle directly at Rick’s face.

_“Enough—it’s the hole for you!”_ The guard continued, the dialect rolling across the dank air to hit the men in the cage like physical blows.

Rick had no idea what the man said, but whatever it was, it launched Thomas into action. The man was on his feet so fast Rick found himself doubting if he’d ever fallen in the first place. Thomas put himself between the guard and Rick, his thin shoulders squared off and blocking Rick’s view of the rifle, his body pressing against where Rick’s hands were curled around the bars.

“No!” Thomas barked, his voice rough with disuse. Rick couldn’t imagine five weeks without talking. He’d go insane. “No, back off!”

_“You want to go back? Back to your friends the rats? Back to the hole?”_

Thomas visibly shuddered at those words and Rick glanced over at Nuzo—the only other one who came close to understanding this exchange. Nuzo waved him off, his eyes pinned to Thomas’ back.

_“Leave him alone,”_ Thomas growled in Dari, grabbing the guard’s attention by revealing he knew what they were saying, had known all along. _“You don’t want him dead yet or you would have already killed him. The hole will kill him.”_

The guard paused, and to Rick it almost looked like he might have smiled. After a moment, he lowered his rifle, then motioned to the other guard to unlock the cage door.

_“Get in,”_ he said in Dari, knowing that Thomas picked up every word. _“Your rat friends will see you soon enough.”_

Without taking his eyes off the guard, Thomas backed into the cage with the other three. No one moved as the door was shut and locked, waiting until the guards moved away. The moment they were out of sight, however, Thomas seemed to fold in on himself, his legs disappearing as he sank soundlessly to the ground.

Rick was in motion in an instant, but Nuzo still beat him to Thomas. The bald man rolled Thomas over to his back and they collectively winced at the emaciated features, chapped lips, rasping breath. Nuzo had his hand on the side of Thomas’ face.

“Jesus, he’s burning up,” he muttered. “What do we got?”

“Water, and some of the pills he got from the French guy,” TC reported.

Rick shifted to his knees, reaching for Thomas and collecting the man against him. He could feel the heat through Thomas’ thin clothes, the way his body shuddered with pain and fever. As had become their habit, he cradled Thomas against his chest, the dark head rolling to rest against Rick’s collarbone. TC force-fed him the antibiotics they’d gotten off a French prisoner months before—they were, in all likelihood, expired, but it was better than nothing.

Thomas greedily swallowed the water, not fully conscious, but aware enough to recognize relief. Rick simply held him, shifting so that TC could tip his head back for the water and Nuzo could inspect him for any other injuries beyond the fever.

“He okay?” Rick asked, hearing the waver in his voice betray the fear that shook through him.

This was too much. The endless interrogations, the beatings, the starvation, the dehydration, the threats and sickness and disease…he could survive all that. But this…seeing his friend like this, knowing how close he was to having to let him go…it was too much.

“He’s not bleeding anywhere, at least,” Nuzo reported.

“What were they saying?”

Nuzo sighed and sank back to his haunches, rubbing a hand over his scalp. “They threatened to put you in the hole,” he revealed. “When Thomas stopped them, they told him they’d take him back.”

“Jesus Christ,” Rick whispered. “He’d just survived five weeks—why risk more?”

Nuzo leveled his eyes on him, a weight in his gaze that Rick carried with him every day since. “He said the hole would kill you.”

Rick blinked. He was right. Alone in silence—no idea what was happening to the rest, no idea when he’d be beaten next—it would drive him mad. He couldn’t bear it, he knew that. He looked down at the unconscious man in his arms, surprised that Thomas knew it, too.

“He’s right,” Rick rasped.

Thomas shivered, muttering something in Spanish.

“You catch that?” TC asked.

“Sounded like…no friend to rats? Rats aren’t friends?” Rick shook his head. “Probably delirious.”

“Maybe. But the guards were talking about sending him back to the rats, so…,” Nuzo sighed. “Let’s see if we can get more water in him and then take shifts keeping him warm until the fever breaks.”

TC moved closer with the water, some of it soaking into Thomas’ beard. Rick simply held him. He didn’t think he was going to be able to let him go anytime soon. He needed this balance, otherwise he was going to be swallowed by the darkness.

“H-hey…,” Thomas murmured suddenly, his eyes opening to slits.

“Hey, buddy,” Rick replied, smiling and squeezing his shoulder gently. “Welcome back.”

“Miss m-me?”

The choked, feeble tone of his voice had Rick’s heart clenching.

“You bet your ass,” Nuzo spoke up. “I keep beating these two chuckleheads at prison chess. Need a decent opponent.”

“H-how long?”

They were all quiet for a moment, each wondering how he’d react to the truth.

“Rick?”

“Five weeks, Tommy,” Rick told him. “You made it back to us, man.”

“Five…,” Thomas blinked his eyes wide for a moment. “L-long assed time.”

They chuckled appreciatively.

“How about sticking around for a while this time?” Rick said.

Thomas blinked again, weariness in every line of his expression. “Only if they…don’t take…you.”

His eyes slid closed and Rick felt panic well up inside him. “Tommy?”

“He’s sleeping, man,” TC assured him, a heavy hand on his shoulder. “Take a breath. He’s just sleeping.”

“Goddamn,” Rick muttered, shaking his head. He dragged a hand down his face, feeling the rasp of his own whiskers against the rough skin of his palm. “God _damn_.”

“You can say that again,” Nuzo sighed. “We’ll have to see if they’ll let us clean him up in a bit—after they’re done being pissed at him. Make sure we keep the lice under control.”

TC nodded, but Rick just looked down at Thomas’ thin face.

“Only if they don’t take you,” he repeated. “This fucking guy.” TC tightened his grip on Rick’s shoulder, and he felt Nuzo’s hand at his back. “We gotta keep him with us.”

“We will,” Nuzo declared. “He’s not leaving us again.”

He did leave them, though.

He left two more times before they escaped, but never as long as five weeks. Each time Rick thought he wasn’t coming back. Each time he survived.

And each time Rick held onto him until they all breathed in sync again.

* * *

_Rick_

He’d only been talking for minutes, but it felt to Rick as though years had passed.

Juliet was watching him with big eyes, her jaw tight enough Rick thought she’d break a tooth. When his words ran out, the quiet in the room grew heavy. His mouth felt dry, his chest tight, his eyes burning. He glanced over at TC and saw the other man was staring at the ground with a lost expression.

As if all the hope had been sucked out of the world.

“You said before,” Juliet started, then had to stop to clear her throat before continuing. “You said that if he made a noise, they beat him.”

Rick nodded and saw TC look up at her.

“Did they…were you treated the same?”

TC answered for him. “Nah, just Thomas. And just in the hole.” He huffed out a weak laugh. “Kinda think that’s why it’s so hard to get him open up these days.”

Rick felt his mouth pull up into an involuntary grin. “It is a bit like pulling teeth, isn’t it?”

“How do you…do this?” Juliet asked, her face like a clenched fist. “What kind of miracle therapy did you complete when you got out of there that allows you to…smile as you do?”

Rick felt gravity pull the sides of his mouth down into a straight line, his eyes on her, hot and hard. “There’s no miracle therapy, Juliet,” he said softly. “There’s just us, and our choices, every day. We either choose to let it eat us up, or we choose to survive. Every. Day.”

TC _hmmm_ ed his agreement. “You said it, brother.”

Juliet opened her mouth, but before she could say anything, her phone rang. She pulled it out, then frowned.

“It’s Detective Katsumoto,” she informed them. She answered and put it on speaker. “Hello, Detective? You’re on speaker.”

_“Ms. Higgins,”_ Katsumoto greeted, as decidedly tense note to his voice. Rick pushed away from the edge of the couch, feeling as though he needed to have his feet planted to hear whatever the man had to say next. _“Do you know a man named Aaron Shepherd?”_

Juliet tilted her head. “The name doesn’t ring a bell.”

_“He’s a mechanic,”_ Katsumoto continued. _“Owns an autobody shop on the east side of the island?”_

Rick watched as Juliet blanched.

“Autobody shop?”

“Why are you asking?” Rick spoke up, instinctively moving closer to Juliet, not liking how pale she was.

Katsumoto paused, then plowed forward. _“He was found murdered a few hours ago. One of his customers called it in. When HPD showed up on the scene, they reported finding a red Ferrari in the shop with a license plate that read Robin 2.”_

“What?” TC stood quickly.

_“Can you account for Magnum’s whereabouts?”_

Juliet swallowed, looking up at Rick. “He isn’t here now, but he didn’t take the Ferrari. He informed me prior to your call earlier today that it was…with a friend for repairs after getting damaged by the men who…attacked him.”

“What?” This time it was Rick’s turn.

_“Let me be clear, I’m not looking at Magnum for Mr. Shepherd’s murder—”_

“Well, that’s something at least,” Rick muttered.

_“—but I think the men who did it may have been after Magnum,”_ Katsumoto concluded. _“There is evidence to suggest Devlin Iona may have been involved.”_

“You mean…the man Magnum asked you to investigate this morning,” Juliet replied, her voice turning acerbic, “and whom you claimed finding no evidence of wrongdoing.”

_“The same,”_ Katsumoto replied, having the grace to sound chagrined. _“Do you know where Magnum is now?”_

Juliet sighed. “Unfortunately, no—”

“I’m trying to ping his phone,” Rick interrupted. He pulled up his Find My Friends app, scrolling for Thomas, then frowned. “Either his phone is off, or he’s somewhere there isn’t any service.”

_“We can put out an APB on the car—do you know what he’s driving?”_

Juliet was already moving toward the door, Rick and TC at her heels. “I’ll have to check the corral,” she said, “give me a moment.”

“What makes you think this Iona guy is involved?” TC asked.

_“Let’s just say, he left a calling card via the Ferrari,”_ Katsumoto replied, cryptically. _“What about his wife and sons?”_

“They’re safe for now,” Juliet informed them as they reached the car corral. “Magnum made certain of that.”

_“I need to speak to his wife,”_ Katsumoto said.

Juliet opened the box of keys, setting the phone down as she did so. “We can arrange a meeting here at Robin’s Nest,” she told him. “Aha—appears he took the blue Lamborghini SUV; license plate is Robin 5.”

_“Subtle.”_

“There is a distinct lack of Chevrolets or Fords in this garage, Detective. He did take the vehicle most likely to blend in, should he be trying to stay under Iona’s radar,” Juliet clapped back.

_“Understood,”_ Katsumoto backed off. _“I’ll put out the APB and be over there in twenty minutes. Do you have a way of reaching Iona’s wife?”_

“Yes,” Juliet replied, darting a look at Rick.

_“Great. Have her meet me there.”_

They heard the click on the other end and Juliet darted a glance between them. The setting sun cast a beam of golden light across the empty lot and shot directly at her eyes, causing her to shield them with the flat of her hand.

“I’ll text Kumu,” she said in response to their leveled eyes.

“Damn, Thomas is not going to be happy when he hears about his friend,” TC muttered.

Rick crossed his arms, looking at Juliet. “Especially if he was already worked up about being the cause of other people’s pain.” Juliet nodded shakily, her eyes on Rick. “Start talking,” he demanded.

“I really don’t know much more than what you heard,” Juliet revealed. “A package was delivered this morning by messenger, I brought it to Magnum and saw the bruises—”

“How bad, for real?” Rick demanded.

“Not debilitating, but…not comfortable,” she tried to classify.

Rick exchanged a look with TC. Whatever the hell _that_ meant. “Go on.”

“He wouldn’t tell me what had happened—said he was handling his own business, like I’d been requesting—but when he opened the package, it was his wallet and cell phone.”

“Must’ve got taken when he was jumped,” TC surmised.

Juliet nodded. “My deduction as well. He immediately called someone and told them to get somewhere safe—said that Devlin had had his phone and therefore knew that he’d been hired by the person on the phone. He seemed,” she frowned, eyes going distant, “panicked. Fearful. He was genuinely concerned about the person’s safety on the other end of the phone, so I offered Kumu as a safe house and he jumped at it.”

“How’d you go from that to _possibly_ being an asshole?”

Juliet cringed in response to Rick’s question. “Katsumoto called and said he hadn’t found anything at the house Magnum sent him to, and I… _may_ have accused him of potentially…overreacting.”

Rick shook his head and rolled his eyes, turning away from her.

“You didn’t see him,” she protested. “He was acting erratic! Irrational. Without provocation…he body-tackled me off the pagoda and acted like we were under sniper attack!”

Rick looked over at TC, who nodded.

“You might have been,” he pointed out, gesturing to Juliet’s phone and the conversation they’d just completed.

“Yes, well,” Juliet crossed her arms, a stubborn set to her jaw. “It’s not like I could have known that, could I?”

“How about maybe next time,” TC offered, his voice a low rumble against the encroaching night, “when a man who makes his living looking into bad guys—and has survived what Thomas has survived—tells you there’s danger out there, you give him the benefit of the doubt.”

Juliet’s lips twitched. “Next time.”

* * *

_Thomas_

The moment he stumbled into the small riverbed Thomas went to his knees.

Pain ripped through him like lightning, coursing down his side with claws of agony. He bit into his lip to keep from screaming, a low cry cutting through the dusky light without his permission. Several birds startled from their search for grubs and took to the air in a flurry of wings, giving a signal of his location to anyone paying close attention.

Thomas simply panted shallowly until the pain abated somewhat.

For a good bit there, he’d been able to keep track of what direction he was running, but when the shadows grew long fingers that wrapped around the Banyan trees, he’d gotten completely turned around. The water splashed up against his blood-soaked cargo shorts and cooled the heated skin of his belly.

Bracing himself with one hand, he cupped the other and drank rapidly, the water tasting slightly of dirt and reminding him sharply of drinking from a tin cup out of an old wooden bucket. The clanging echo of metal bars hit with rifle butts and the distinctive cadence of questions shouted in Dari filled his ears for one long, terrifying moment. He shook his head, burying his face in the icy water and then pulling it free to gasp a desperate breath.

The jungle was back with its concert of humming, thrumming, buzzing and chirping. Frogs, cicadas, howler monkeys, and birds replaced the cacophony of pain that seemed intent on making its mark once more on Thomas’ psyche.

Raging thirst temporarily satiated, he sank back against his heels and peeled off the saturated, make-shift bandage from his side.

The wound was still bleeding, which was a problem. He hadn’t lost his pursuers, even as night approached. He couldn’t stop here; there was nowhere to hide.

He wasn’t going to last much longer, leaking like he was. Cupping water again, he tried to clean the wound, unable to really get to the back. He shivered, feeling his skin shudder at even the slightest contact against the wound.

_This is gonna hurt_ ….

“It already hurts,” he whispered a reply to the Nuzo voice in his memory. He needed to get the wound covered and get the hell out of there.

Scooping up some of the mud from the riverbed, he slathered it against his side, hissing at the contact. In all likelihood, the bacteria in the dirt would easily trigger infection in the open wound, but he was currently in more danger of passing out and going into shock from blood loss.

_Figure out what can kill you now…._

Mud packing both sides of the wound, he rinsed the blood from the pieces of his shirt as best he could, flinching when he heard echoes of shouts in the distance.

“Damn, these guys are relentless,” Thomas whispered to the Nuzo voice that had been keeping him moving forward as the jungle around him grew dark.

_We’re getting out of here, Tommy…all of us, together. You hang onto that._

“Yeah, yeah,” Thomas muttered, wrapping the cool, wet shirt around his middle as a bandage once more, relieved that the mud poultice was working. “Just rub some dirt on it, right Nuz?”

_Get your ass moving_ , Nuzo’s voice demanded.

Thomas staggered to his feet, ricocheting against trees as he moved forward, his whole being focused on one thing: _escape_.

Keep moving and they couldn’t get him, couldn’t trap him, couldn’t throw him in that hole. He wouldn’t survive it again, not again. He wouldn’t survive the silence, the solitude, not knowing if his friends were okay, if they were alive.

He panted, the jungle blurring around him until it was all just darkness, reaching out with greedy fingers to tug at him, cause him to stagger and stumble, try to pull him down.

_Focus, kid_ , Nuzo ordered. _Don’t run to your death._

The familiar SEAL Team phrase pulled Thomas up short. He stood braced against the dark, gasping, one hand on his side. He needed to figure out where he was going, or they were going to simply run him down.

He closed his eyes, listening to the island. The cliff face he’d parked near had been north of the house, he remembered. With that being the highest point, it meant the shallow river he’d just crossed had been flowing south.

South meant civilization, eventually. People. Help.

Thomas turned to his right, moving in the direction he knew the river was flowing. He could feel his body shivering, knew what the onset of fever felt like. He pulled out his phone, squinting against the harsh light, and hit send one more time on his text to Katsumoto. Nothing.

Cursing, Thomas staggered on—his only hope was getting to a spot in the jungle where he had reception.

“Did you see that? Light! Over there! Looks like maybe a phone.”

“Dammit,” Thomas whispered to himself as the voice echoed toward him. He tucked his cell phone back into his pocket.

“We see you, Private Dick!”

Thomas sped up, his body trembling from the inside out as he demanded more from it than it was able to give. His vision wavered, his breath beat against his throat, his heart slammed against his ribs, but he wasn’t going to stop—not now. He didn’t survive eighteen months in a fucking cave to be killed in the jungle by these idiots. No way.

Stumbling to a stop in a cluster of vine-covered trees, Thomas turned around, trying to get a sense of distance, his whole being wavering with the motion. He caught sight of a bobbing flashlight beam coming toward him, but just before the light hit him full-on, he felt his knees disappear, his body dropping like a rock at the base of a Banyan tree, vines and heavy-leafed brush covering him.

His breath slipped from parted lips in abbreviated gasps, consciousness barely a reality, as three men crashed through the jungle right past him, missing him entirely as he lay hidden by the foliage.

The moment they passed, Thomas let himself fall completely back against the tree, his body thrumming with pain and heat, unable to hold himself up any longer.

“N-nuzo,” he breathed.

But Nuzo didn’t reply this time. His only companion was the dark as he slipped from awareness into nightmare.

* * *

_Rick_

Meghan Iona was a very attractive woman with a very sad story, from Rick’s perspective. When she arrived at Robin’s Nest—via a trusted driver rather than by Kumu herself so that the woman could keep an eye on Meghan’s sons—Rick knew instantly why Thomas had been compelled to take her case, even when it turned out to not be a simple cheating husband situation.

The guy never had been able to turn away a broken heart.

“You have to believe me,” Meghan told them tearfully, “I had no idea what Dev was into.”

Juliet took pity on the woman, resting a comforting hand on her shoulder as she handed her a glass of water. “We believe you,” she assured her.

“Detective Katsumoto just needs to get some details from you,” TC supplied.

“And you said that Dev… _killed_ someone?” Meghan asked, dark eyes looking at each of them with disbelief.

“Or ordered him killed,” Rick nodded. “The man who died helped Thomas…I’m guessing your husband tracked the car to the shop.” He shrugged; it was pretty clear what happened next by connecting the dots.

“What can I do?” Meghan asked.

Juliet took a breath, then moved over to where she’d set her laptop as they’d waited for Meghan and Katsumoto to arrive. Rick leaned against the back of the couch, pinching the bridge of his nose. It was nearing midnight; after such a long afternoon of worry and research, he was feeling the weight of weariness press against him, yet Juliet looked as fresh as though it were the middle of the morning.

Must be all the yoga.

“I was able to do a bit of digging,” she said, “and it appears that your husband may have been connected to the Yakuza.”

Meghan blinked in obvious disbelief. “The Japanese mafia? You have to be joking.”

Juliet glanced at Rick, then looked back at Meghan, her expression sympathetic. “That’s not all,” she said softly. “There is evidence to suggest…that your father is as well.”

Meghan stared at Juliet for almost a full minute without saying a word. Rick wasn’t sure the woman had truly heard what Juliet told her until she lifted the water glass to her lips with a trembling hand and downed the contents. When she set it on the table and stood, Rick reached instinctively to balance her but found it unnecessary.

“I should be surprised, I suppose,” she said softly. “But…in a way, it makes everything else make sense.”

A knock came at the door and TC went to let Katsumoto in as Juliet moved toward Meghan.

“I’m so sorry, Meghan,” Juliet said softly. “I know what it’s like to find out that someone is different from who you thought they were. It’s a…unique kind of betrayal.”

Meghan shook her head. “I’ve been stupid,” she said. “Selfish. Weak. My father, my husband…they kept me under their control and I…,” she looked at Juliet, dark eyes snapping, “I _allowed_ it. And now a good man is in trouble because of me.”

“Hey, no,” Rick shook his head. “One martyr in this story is enough. Thomas is in trouble because he put himself there—and he’d do it again for any of us. That’s just who he is. Don’t you go blaming yourself.”

Meghan nodded shakily, then her eyes tracked to movement behind Rick.

“Mrs. Iona,” Katsumoto said, following TC into the room, “I’m Detective Katsumoto. Thank you for meeting me here.”

Meghan shook Katsumoto’s outstretched hand.

“Anything I can do, Detective,” she said, eyes darting around the room to take them all in. “Mr. Magnum was just trying to help me—I need to help make sure he’s safe.”

Katsumoto sighed. “Thank you,” he nodded. “I need to know what information you gave Magnum to use to search for your husband.”

“Information?”

Katsumoto rested his hands on his hips, his blazer a bit wrinkled after the day. “Magnum sent us to a house that listed you as the realtor; how did he know to go to that house?”

Meghan took a slow breath. “I gave him some houses that Dev had asked me to list for him, sight unseen. I was suspicious of why he insisted I not inspect them or tour them myself…and they were all very remote. They’d be difficult sales to say the least, but he was…unconcerned.”

Katsumoto dragged a hand down his face. Rick watched the other man for his tells—Katsumoto had them in spades: the way he stood, when he crossed his arms, how many times he sighed. He wondered if the man had any idea he was giving so much away just by existing.

“Were any of those houses located around the Kai Kane Loop?”

Meghan blinked. “Let me look.” She pulled up her phone and began scrolling.

“What is it?” Rick asked, the hairs on his neck standing on end. This was bad. This was very, very bad.

Katsumoto held up a hand in Rick’s direction, his eyes on Meghan. Rick exchanged a glance with TC, both men subconsciously closing ranks as they waited. Meghan looked up.

“Yes, there were two locations near Kai Kane Loop,” she said.

Rick was watching Katsumoto as Meghan spoke. The police Detective brought his chin up at her affirmation, his mouth opening slightly, looking for all the world as though the words he needed next had literally turned to dust before his eyes.

“What _is it_?” Rick repeated, this time putting a hand on Katsumoto’s bicep, turning the man around to face him. “Tell us.”

Katsumoto swallowed, then gently pulled his arm out of Rick’s grasp. “A couple of tourists reported a car off the side of the road, down a cliffside, on Kai Kane Loop,” he said. “It matched the description of the car Magnum took. I got a report on the way over here that the license plate read Robin 5.”

“And you’re just telling us this now?” Rick growled. He felt TC step up close to him in support rather than restraint.

“I needed to be sure there was a reason for Magnum to be up there,” Katsumoto stated.

“Well, you got your reason,” Rick snapped. “Let’s go!”

He started for the door. His heart felt like it was about to come through his ribcage, his eyes burned. This was not happening again, not _again_. They were getting Thomas back and then he was going to put a freaking chip in the man’s neck—

“Wait,” Katsumoto stepped in front of him, a hand at his chest. “I’m sending men up there—”

“Oh, fuck that,” Rick growled, moving around Katsumoto’s restraining hand, TC on his heels. “I’m not sitting here hoping for the best when Thomas is over the side of a cliff somewhere.”

“He’s not in the car,” Katsumoto told him.

“What?” Rick half-turned to face the detective.

“I had officers check the car,” Katsumoto told him. “It was empty.”

“So, where the hell is he?” Rick demanded.

Katsumoto turned to face Meghan Iona. “I need those addresses.”

Meghan nodded and glanced at Juliet for help. Juliet hurried to her desk and grabbed a pad of paper and a pen, taking them to the other woman.

“We’re going with you,” TC spoke up as Meghan wrote furiously.

“I told you, I have men who—”

TC stepped forward, his size imposing, his calm voice even more so. “Detective, all due respect, that’s our brother out there. We’re going.”

Katsumoto’s jaw flexed.

“We’ve been proven to be of help in the past,” Juliet pointed out.

Katsumoto looked over at her. “Not you, too.”

“You didn’t think I was going to sit idly by and wait for word, did you?”

“I didn’t think you even liked Magnum, to be honest,” Katsumoto told her.

Rick saw something interesting play across Juliet’s expression—something close to offense but skirting the edge of guilt as well.

“You were mistaken, Detective,” she replied.

“Here,” Meghan handed Katsumoto the list of addresses. “What should I do?”

“I’ll have an officer take you back to your sons and stay with you,” Katsumoto stated. “The rest of you, remember—we are looking for a missing person. We have no warrants. No firing unless fired upon.”

“And what if they don’t much care about warrants?” Rick demanded.

Katsumoto lifted an eyebrow. “You do whatever it takes to get home.”

“Gentlemen,” Juliet called, opening a hidden door behind a painting above her desk. “These may come in handy.”

Rick’s eyes lit up at the arsenal she revealed.

“Now, that’s what I’m talking about,” TC grinned, the first to move toward her.

It didn’t take them long to select weapons and get the officer to take Meghan back to Kumu’s place. Juliet followed them out to Katsumoto’s car, climbing into the front before either man could say a word. Exchanging a look, Rick and TC shared a shrug, then got into the back seat as Katsumoto climbed behind the wheel and headed out of the estate and toward the location where Robin’s Lamborghini had been found.

“He’s going to be okay, right?” Rick couldn’t help but ask.

“You know how tough T.M. is,” TC responded. “The man is all in, all the time.” He repeated the common SEAL Team phrase with confidence.

“He’s been through a lot, TC,” Rick said, eyes on the darkness outside the window. “We all have.”

“Which is why I know he’ll make it,” TC told him. “You didn’t think he was going to make it out of the valley, either. Look how that ended.”

“How did that end?” Juliet asked.

Rick jumped, startled, having lost track of their audience. He glanced over at TC. It wasn’t an easy story to tell.

“I guess you could say he…out-stubborned himself,” TC said.

* * *

_Korengal, 2016, TC_

When he thinks about it, he’s pretty sure it was the guard breaking his arm that finally pushed Thomas over the edge. Five different times in the hole, four different camp locations, over a year of starvation and sickness and beatings…and yet, it was a broken arm that triggered their escape.

Theodore Calvin had always been a bit of a gentle giant. His mama, when she was alive, would stroke his hair and smile at him and tell him that God made him strong so he could take care of people. His dad, when he was around, would simply assume that he was okay because he was always bigger and tougher than the other kids.

Ironically, it wasn’t until he’d joined the Marines—one of the most demanding branches of the Armed Services—that he was appreciated for his heart. Strength was a given; they were all strong. It was empathy that made him stand out from the rest.

In the first year of their captivity, he’d kept that part of him at the forefront—watching out for the others, keeping them whole as best he could, but never causing trouble, never triggering the guard’s wrath. He didn’t answer their questions, but he didn’t provoke them, either. He simply stayed near his friends and kept his head down.

Then they shot Thomas.

It came as a shock to all of them when it happened. It probably shouldn’t have—Thomas had consistently pushed the limits of their captors will. Six weeks prior he’d spent almost a month in the hole for trying to steal a radio. This time wasn’t any different—except that it was.

They were moving cages as they sometimes did, transferring Thomas and Nuzo to a cage across the way from Rick and TC, and the guard that always pulled Thomas away from them and threw him into the hole spun the man around and shoved him against the wall, rough enough TC heard the back of Thomas’ head _thunk_ the rock behind him.

Thomas struggled, and the man simply shot him, leaving him bleeding on the floor before walking away.

TC would never forget the cold rage that started to build up from his gut to wrap around his heart at the sound of Thomas weak, pain-filled gasps. He and Rick pressed their bodies against the bars, watching in horror as blood continued to spill from their friend’s side, his voice growing weaker as he stated with startling clarity that he was going to bleed out.

He couldn’t tear his eyes away from garish image of all that blood. He’d seen bruises and burns, whip marks and wrists rubbed raw from cuffs, on each of them. All of them. He’d seen them weak and delirious, thin from hunger and distraught from nightmares.

But he hadn’t seen that much blood on someone who was still alive. Not in all the time they’d been trapped in that place.

They shot Thomas. They shot him and he didn’t stop bleeding and Nuzo used gunpowder from a stolen bullet to burn it shut and Thomas _screamed_.

The all-consuming pain in that sound heated TC’s cold rage to a boiling point and he simmered with it. The sound of Thomas screaming was something TC wouldn’t get out of his head. For _months_ after. He heard Thomas scream in his dreams—it woke him in a cold sweat night after night.

They’d been forced to move camps that same night, Thomas barely able to stand, the three of them holding him up—Rick practically carrying him most of the way. They moved at night, rank-smelling canvass bags over their heads, hands tied with coarse rope, Thomas shaking apart in their arms, until they reached the next place.

The _last_ place.

To no one’s surprise, the gunshot wound wasn’t healing. It festered and ate at Thomas like a poison, more and more each day. They’d run out of their stolen antibiotics, and the water in the new location tasted metallic, and the food…TC knew this would be the end for all of them if they didn’t do something.

So, when he heard the voices outside the camp, he took advantage. They’d grown so accustomed to the staccato cadence of the Afghani dialects—Dari, Urdu, and Pashto, foreign and yet…familiar at once. The shock of hearing a different accent, a smoother tone, was enticing and captivating.

The voices weren’t American—he was pretty sure they were French—but they weren’t Taliban, and that was all that mattered. He had no idea what the French were doing wherever it was they were, but he was done staying silent. He was done being gentle, empathetic, the rock that everyone knew would care for them.

The molten rage had awoken a giant and he roared. He shouted at the top of his lungs, his deep, resounding voice finally put to good use.

“American soldiers! There are American soldiers here!”

He heard the pause and the confusion in the voices outside the camp, but then three guards rushed them, grabbing him from the cell, beating him with their rifles. One man covered his mouth while another grabbed his wrist and wrenched his arm behind his back, twisting it until the bone broke.

He didn’t remember much after that, waking again in the cell, Nuzo holding him down, Rick working to set the bone as best he could with strips from the ends of their shirts and a broken wooden bucket. Thomas was at his head, his hands on his face, and he was speaking low and rapidly in Spanish. TC wasn’t sure if he _knew_ he was speaking in Spanish, but the sound was soothing, the swift cadence of sound washing over him and distracting him as Rick put the bone right and strapped the wood braces in place.

“We’re getting the fuck out of here,” Thomas had said as TC lay in their laps, catching his breath and trying not to blink as that mere act would jar his arm and send pain spiking through him. “We’re getting out of here now.”

He was rocking a bit with the fervor of his conviction. Or maybe he was trembling from the fever. TC couldn’t be sure; his whole world was starting to white out a bit around the edges.

“How the hell are we gonna manage that?” Rick scoffed, his voice rasping with suppressed emotion.

“French soldiers,” Thomas declared, his words hitched and stilted as he fought to control his breathing—either from pain or anticipation. “They heard us, they haven’t left.”

Nuzo had looked at Rick then. “Not a bad idea,” he said. “They’ve got vehicles.”

“TC, can you walk?” Thomas asked.

“Broke my arm, not my legs,” TC responded, though the idea of moving made him want to throw up.

“Thomas, you can barely stand,” Rick protested. “How are you—”

“Don’t worry about me,” Thomas snapped. “I’ll be fine. But you won’t. And TC won’t. We…,” his voice shook, “we gotta get outta here, man.”

So, they did.

When the guard brought the water bucket in later that afternoon, they were ready. Nuzo and Rick jumped him, and Thomas took a splintered piece of wood from the broken bucket and shoved it into the soft underside of the man’s chin, silencing him forever. TC always wondered if Thomas got a bit of closure with that maneuver—it had been the same man who’d thrown him in the hole, who’d shot him and left him to die.

They hauled TC forward, the big man biting a hole through his lip to keep silent until they managed to get through the flimsy barricade to the waiting vehicles.

It was only when they reached the outside that TC saw they were so close to an actual town. _Civilization_. Their captors must have been desperate with this last move; there was no other reason for them to have taken such a risk.

The four men climbed into the back of an empty vehicle, covered up with a tarp, and waited to see if their absence would be discovered before the French drove away. When the vehicle began to move, TC almost passed out from sheer relief. They rode to the next stop, then climbed out when they no longer heard voices around them, Nuzo able to get his bearings quickly.

TC was dimly aware that while Rick was supporting him, Nuzo was holding Thomas on his feet. The smaller man was panting heavily, and TC knew the infection had weakened him severely, but he wasn’t giving in. His friends weren’t going to let him.

The first time Thomas stumbled, TC heard him let out a soft groan and he felt his own heart clench at the sound—it wasn’t just pain, it was exhaustion, surrender. It was the precipice of resistance.

“We’re getting out of here, Tommy…,” Nuzo whispered to Thomas, the quiet that surrounded them enough so that they all heard his oath, “all of us, together. You hang onto that.”

And he did.

Thomas grabbed onto those words and used them like a lifeline, like fuel in his heart. After so many months in captivity, it was amazing how easy their escape seemed to be. Their captors must have thought them too weak to be of any threat—but they didn’t know the men they kept in their cages.

At one point, TC felt himself slowing, he and Rick lagging behind the other two. Thomas’ voice drifted back to them, strong in the darkness, like a rope pulling him forward to safety.

“C’mon…c’mon, TC,” Thomas gasped. “L-like you said…they b-broke your arm…not your…your legs.”

“Keep talkin’, little man,” TC growled.

“L-long as you keep w-walkin’,” Thomas retorted.

It kept on like that: TC fading, the pain in his arm almost blinding him at times, Thomas goading him forward, the strength in his words shaded only by the tremble in his voice. Rick and Nuzo remained silent, stalwartly pushing on, but TC suspected they both used Thomas’ words as their fuel and their anchor.

Only when they reached the outpost for the American base did Thomas finally collapse, his voice silenced by exhaustion, his body burning up with fever. TC sank to the ground next to his friend, cradling his broken arm, waiting for their salvation. They were surrounded by a flurry of activity, but it was a blur to him.

All he could hear was Thomas’ voice, pushing him forward, keeping him moving.

Saving him.

* * *

_TC_

Emotion wrapped cold fingers around his throat.

Recounting that time played the images across his vision once more but they felt…removed, as though they were happening to someone else. He ached from the loss of Nuzo, from the fear of losing Thomas. He ached from the weight that was simply moving forward in life. Without that constant cadence of one voice telling him he could do this; he was going to make it.

“You’re a hundred percent right, brother,” Rick said softly, his blue eyes bright in the ambient light from Katsumoto’s dashboard. “Nuzo and me…we kept going ‘cause of him.”

“And you just…walked out? After all that time?” Juliet marveled softly.

TC and Rick were silent.

“I’m sorry,” Juliet scrambled quickly. “That was insensitive of me. I-I didn’t mean—”

“It’s okay, Higgy,” TC took pity on her. He knew she didn’t mean to minimize their ordeal; she was just British. “It kind of felt like that for us, too.”

“Yeah, I always imagined some kind of big firefight, like Butch and Sundance. Only, y’know…with us surviving,” Rick confessed. “It took me a while to accept that I wasn’t dreaming. That they weren’t going to haul us back to that cave. Even after we got to Germany.”

“Doubt Thomas remembers the trip to Germany,” TC commented. “He wasn’t really conscious for most of it.”

“Yeah,” Rick agreed.

TC could feel that his friend didn’t really want to go back there quite yet, not with Thomas missing. There was a tense energy radiating from Rick, a tightness around his eyes that TC had learned to watch for.

Rick was the one with the ready smile—even more so than Thomas. He was the one who acted like everything they’d survived had happened in another lifetime, to another version of them. Until life took his legs out from under him, and then he fell harder and faster than the rest.

“He’s tough, Orville,” TC repeated, reminding his friend that they’d made it through worse. “We’ll find him, you’ll see. He’ll give us that damn Cheshire cat grin and ask us what took us so long.”

Rick caught his bottom lip between his teeth, as though stopping himself from saying anything, and then nodded. TC clapped a heavy hand on his friend’s shoulder, grounding him and reminding him they were in this together. He knew without ever being told that while the four of them escaped, Rick had anchored himself to Thomas. It had become clear to him when they were recovering in Germany, and he watched it continue as they built lives for themselves in Hawaii.

“He’s one of the lucky ones,” TC finished, expecting that to be the end of it.

“Sometimes I wonder,” Rick replied quietly, drawing not only TC’s worried gaze, but causing Juliet to twist sideways in her seat as well.

“Wonder what?” TC asked.

Rick lifted a shoulder, his eyes toward the front windshield, but miles away, years away, the blue irises hazy. “I wonder if the lucky ones are the ones who didn’t make it out of there. They were the ones made of light, y’know? Too bright to survive all that…that darkness.” He shook his head, turning away from TC to look out the side window. “But not us, man. Not us, no. We got the darkness inside us. And we get to live with it.”

The car was quiet for several minutes as the rest of them tried to balance Rick’s words. TC felt his world tilt a bit as he regarded the man next to him, dressed in a Hawaiian shirt and pink pants. The words fit the man who was at home in a sniper’s blind, sighting down a barrel at a target, deadliest aim in the group. Not the man they were used to seeing tease smiles from patrons at the Club.

TC took a breath. _I got this_ , he reminded himself.

This wasn’t new. This wasn’t strange. This was _Rick_ —scared, uncertain, off-center, needing his balance.

And without Thomas around, TC was that balance.

“Brother, I’d rather stand with you in the dark than alone in the light any day,” TC told him softly, tightening his grip on Rick’s shoulder.

At his words, Rick looked over at him, surprise and gratitude relaxing his face and lifting the haze from his blue eyes. He smiled and TC watched the weight and worry take a back seat to the resilience and determination that put all of Rick’s broken pieces back together.

“Same, my friend,” Rick said, holding his hand out for TC to shake.

“We’re here,” Katsumoto said, speaking for the first time since they’d climbed into the car.

They pulled off in a secluded, wooded area surrounded by jungle, then turned off the car and climbed out. Katsumoto stood with them and they watched as two more cruisers pulled up, lights off.

“The SUV was found down the side of that cliff,” Katsumoto gestured across the road and to a very scary drop-off.

“And you’re _sure_ he’s not down there?” Rick asked again.

“Positive,” Katsumoto replied. “Here’s how it’s going to go. We take the house first, arrest anyone in there on suspicion of…whatever the hell I want.”

“Thought you didn’t have warrants,” Rick commented.

Katsumoto shrugged. “I don’t,” he said. “But I can hold anyone for twenty-four hours.”

TC noticed that the police detective had a different edge to him, like a sharpened knife. His eyes even glinted in the dark.

“Roger that,” Rick nodded. “Suspicion of whatever the hell you want, it is.”

“And if Magnum’s not in the house?” Juliet asked, crossing her arms and tilting her head in challenge.

Katsumoto glanced at her, then let his eyes rest on Rick and TC. “Then we find out where he is, and we go get him.”

Rick pulled his weapon from his waist band and chambered a round. “That’s all I needed to hear.”

With the officers leading the way, TC, Rick, and Juliet headed down the long driveway, the tree coverage growing denser the further in they went. Katsumoto had ordered no flashlights, not wanting to give away their position. TC found himself opening his eyes wider, trying to see as much as he could, the sounds of the jungle amplified somehow in the darkness.

When they reached the opening, he took a breath, the claustrophobic sensation of night abating momentarily. He saw several dark SUVs parked to the side and a few lights on inside a rather large house.

“On me,” Katsumoto said to the officers flanking him, then charged directly for the front door, announcing his presence seconds before kicking the door in.

TC, Rick, and Juliet hung back as the shouting escalated then abated inside the house, only approaching when Katsumoto called out, “Clear!”

When they stepped inside, TC’s eyes tracked immediately to where Katsumoto was wiping blood from a split lip with the back of his hand while cuffing a well-dressed businessman who had a knee brace on one leg. Two other men were cuffed and sitting on the floor nearby.

“Little bitch,” growled the man with the knee brace. “Knew she’d give me up.”

TC’s eyes darted around the room, and he moved toward the opened door to the kitchen.

No Magnum.

“Where is he?” He heard Rick growl behind him as he returned to his friends.

The businessman grinned. “You looking for your little Private Dick?”

Juliet marched over to the man and kicked his knee brace, causing him to cry out and curve forward.

“He prefers Private Investigator,” she stated calmly. “Now, where is he?”

“He’s out in the jungle,” one of the other men reported, a smirk on his lips. “And he’s hit.”

“What do you mean, _hit_?” Rick demanded. When no one replied, he pulled his weapon, flicking off the safety, and pointed it at the man who’d spoken. “C’mon, man. Give me a reason.”

“He means,” the man with the knee brace gasped, struggling back upright. “That my men were shooting at him, and one of them found blood on the path he ran. So, who knows, man. Could be he’s dead out there somewhere.”

“You still have men after him?” Juliet asked.

“Until I have confirmation of a body, you bet your sweet Brit ass I do,” the man replied.

Rick looked at Katsumoto. The detective nodded.

“Yep, that’s all I need,” Katsumoto replied. “Devlin Iona, you’re under arrest.”

“On what charge?” Iona protested as Katsumoto hauled him to his feet.

“On being an asshole, how’s that?” Rick retorted.

“On suspicion of drug trafficking, illegal possession of weapons, and literally just confessing to ordering a man to be shot, dumbass,” Katsumoto shoved the limping man toward one of the officers. “Take these three idiots to central lock-up and hold them there until I get there with proof to take away the rest of their lives.”

The officer nodded, and another two officers hauled the other two men to their feet and pushed them toward the cars. That left one other officer with Katsumoto. He sighed looking over at Rick and TC.

“We need to split up and cover this area in a grid formation,” he said. “And we need a helluva lot more people.”

“You got any reception?” TC suddenly asked, looking at his phone. Rick and Katsumoto pulled their phones out, both cursing.

“This helps confirm Magnum’s location,” Juliet pointed out. “You’d said he either had his phone off—which I have yet to see him do—or he was somewhere without reception.”

Katsumoto looked at the officer. “Go get all the flashlights and radios you can from the cruisers and meet me back here in five,” he said. “We’re splitting up. Rick, you and Juliet take South, TC and I will take North. If either of us finds anything, we’ll radio on channel 357.”

“Iona still has men out there,” TC warned. “We’re not just looking for Thomas.”

Katsumoto nodded. “That’s right,” he said. He let his eyes rest on each of them briefly. “And you do what you have to. Stay alive and find him.”

“Hey, Katsumoto,” Rick asked, looking around the empty living room. “How are you gonna get enough evidence to book that guy?”

“I’ll worry about that after we get Magnum,” Katsumoto said. “Something tells me he’s all the evidence I’ll need.”


	4. Chapter 4

I try to understand how we’re here again  
In the middle of the storm  
There’s nowhere to go, nowhere to go  
But straight through the smoke  
And the fight is all we know  
\- _Walk Through the Fire_ , Zayde Wolf

_Thomas_

He was moving.

He didn’t remember waking up. He didn’t remember standing, picking a direction. He came aware when a broad leaf smacked him in the face as he staggered through the jungle, the world outside a smothering dark, the work inside a screaming fire.

He was moving through the night, vines snagging his arms, spiderwebs clinging to his face, and a sharp, breath-stealing pain in his side. He felt his breath crest over dry, cracked lips. He had no idea what direction he was headed, he just knew that stopping wasn’t an option.

They needed him to keep going. Keep walking. They needed to escape—they weren’t going to survive otherwise.

A voice shouted at him in Dari, causing him to flinch back, stumbling in the dark, his shoulder hitting a tree. There was a weapon in his hand—he wasn’t sure where it came from, but he knew how to use it. He pointed it toward the voice, trying to pinpoint its location, but it seemed to come at him from all directions.

He blinked, shaking his head—the voice was yelling about rats. The goddamn _rats_. Months and months of questions about troop movements, commanding officer names, weapons, artillery, and in the end they scream at him about the rats.

“Fuck the rats,” he muttered, staggering forward. _God,_ he hurt. “Always hated those damn things. Worse than the cave….”

Everything hurt. It hurt to blink. To _breathe_.

But he couldn’t stop. If he stopped, they’d find them, and he couldn’t let that happen. He had to get them out of there, get them to safety. Get them _home_.

“Rick? Nuzo? TC?” he called, trying to make sure they heard him without giving away his position to their enemy. He had to make sure they were okay—why weren’t they answering him?

A branch snapped.

“Rick?”

“Wrong.”

The voice was startlingly close, and Thomas whirled toward it on instinct, leading with his weapon. A hand grabbed at his wrist and shoved his aim upward. It wasn’t until then that he saw the figure, staggering back as the grip pressed hard against his arms, working to rid him of his one means of defense.

“You caused us a lot of trouble, Private Dick,” snarled a heavily accented voice.

But not Dari. Not Pashtu.

Thomas shook his head, the motion sending him to one knee as the figure shifted his grip to wrap fingers around Thomas’ throat, knocking him to the ground, water splashing around him as he hit.

“Wait….” When had there been a river?

“Goddamn punk,” the figure growled as he struggled with Thomas over the weapon. “You’re fucking half-dead anyway…just give it to me.”

“Go to hell,” Thomas gasped, twisting his grip until the muzzle of the gun was pressed between them, and pulled the trigger. Once, twice, three times.

The weight on him increased, shoving the air from his lungs. Huffing out an exhausted sob, he released the weapon, leaving it trapped between them, the heat of the muzzle burning his bare skin.

He almost didn’t have the strength to move the body away from him; if he didn’t move, he was going to die here. That much he knew.

With trembling arms, he pulled himself free and staggered to his feet, splashing across the shallow river.

He was completely turned around, and his body thrummed with a persistent pain that stole his clarity and sent his senses spinning. He went to one knee in the river, the cold water shocking him aware. It was cold—bone-achingly cold.

But it was water. He needed to stay near water. He needed to find shelter near water. It was basic survival; water meant life.

He looked around, the black starting to turn gray as dawn began to paint the edges of the horizon. Where the hell was he? This wasn’t the Korengal…. How did he…?

A shout in the distance caught his attention and he staggered the rest of the way across the river.

“River,” he pressed his hand against the stabbing pain in his side. “The mud….”

He’d been this way before, he realized. How had he gotten so turned around?

It didn’t matter. He had to keep moving. The Taliban were still after him.

“No, not…,” he muttered, leaning against a tree on the other side of the river, pressing the heel of his hand to his closed eye.

Not the Taliban. The drug dealers. Weapons dealers. Whatever. The Bad Guys. The guy back there was one of them.

And if he caught up, how close were the others? How long had he been walking?

_“Thomas!”_

Did they know his name? Were they calling for him now? He stepped out of the river, his foot sliding in the mud, and fell, hard, landing on his side.

He was screaming before he was truly aware of anything beyond the pain, blinking through a haze of torment as the sound seemed to echo around him, bouncing off the waning darkness itself and crashing back against him like a surgical strike.

* * *

_Rick_

“I should’ve kept a closer eye on him,” Rick muttered to himself and he and Juliet swept the area south of the house.

They’d been walking for over thirty minutes without a sign of anything—no broken branches, no blood trail, not even a super-convenient a flashing neon sign telling them which way to go. He was getting discouraged and not a little afraid. The jungle was so dense, they could have walked right past Thomas and not known it.

“You can hardly blame yourself for the choices of a grown man,” Juliet scoffed.

Rick spared her a glance. “I don’t expect you to understand.”

She pulled up short, pinning the beam of her flashlight directly in his eyes. “Oh, because I can’t possibly understand the bond forged by adversity, is that it?”

Feeling the muscles in his neck coil of their own volition, Rick matched her beam for beam, pointing his flashlight back at her. “Yeah, that’s pretty much it.”

Juliet stepped forward, her light intense enough he was forced to look to the side.

“I may not have survived eighteen months being interrogated by the Taliban, but I do know what it’s like to build devoted friendships.”

Rick turned away, his beam on the ground once more. “It’s not the same.”

Juliet huffed. “I don’t think it’s quite fair to say—”

“I don’t give a damn what you think is fair,” Rick snapped, turning to face her, fear and anger and exhaustion and worry culminating in a cold rage that he could feel snapping at her from his eyes and holding his entire body like a clenched fist.

“Eighteen months, Juliet. _Eighteen_. With nothing but those three guys to keep me from going crazy. We got questions and fists. We got pretty damn familiar with the taste of our own blood.” He leaned forward, pinning here with a pointed glare. “You don’t get a comb or a clean shirt or a toothbrush, but you get to know the sound of your buddy’s breathing. You know every nightmare, every doubt, every…every h-hope.”

He paused to drag in a shaking breath, realizing as he did so that he was able to see her silhouette without the aid of the flashlight. It was nearing dawn.

“And unless you’ve had that? Unless you’ve survived _that_?” He flopped his hands out at his sides, then half turned from her. “Then no…I don’t expect you to understand.”

_“Rick?”_

He froze, then looked back at Juliet.

“Did you just—”

She nodded vigorously, lifting the beam of her flashlight to the dense jungle. “Magnum!”

They stood still and listened, trying to pinpoint where that weak, pain-soaked voice had called his name. And then they heard shots. Three of them in quick succession.

“Oh shit,” Rick breathed, propelled forward, Juliet behind him.

He registered that she was radioing TC and Katsumoto, but he kept moving toward where the shots had come from.

“You don’t think Devlin’s men—”

“Has to be,” Rick bit out. Thomas had kept away from them all night only for them to catch up now—it just wasn’t fair. “Thomas!”

He moved around a Banyan tree and then pulled up short as a scream tore through the thin morning. It shook him, setting him back on his heels. It was the same scream he’d heard when Nuzo lit that gunpowder on Thomas’ belly. It was the scream TC described as haunting his dreams.

For a moment, he was frozen, unable to move, the breath sucked from his body with the implication of that scream.

Juliet, however, was not hindered by the same demons that anchored Rick to the spot. She tore past him, running through the foliage toward the sound of the scream, quickly swallowed up by the jungle.

Rick blinked, trying to clear his vision. It was as though the world had suddenly gone soft at the edges, fog collecting around him. A strange, high-pitch whine echoed in his ears, like the after-effect of a too-near explosion. He stood still, trying to get his vision to clear, trying to hear _anything_.

Then he saw the muzzle.

It glinted off the edge of his flashlight beam. He might not have even noticed it, might have run right on by as Juliet had, but his body was conditioned to respond to weapons, to react to threats, and his sidearm was up before he’d truly registered the movement.

He heard two shots: one from the other weapon slicing a leaf in half near his head, the other one from him, the bullet buried neatly into their target.

And the world came back online.

“Rick!”

Juliet’s cry of alarm cut through the left-over haze and he was in motion once more. He pushed the heavy ground cover aside to see a man in a rumpled, dirty suit lying prone, a silencer attached to his pistol, the weapon inches from his outstretched hand. Rick kicked it into the vines, away from the body.

“One less bad guy,” he shouted back. “Did you find him?”

“Not yet, but he must be around here somewhere.”

Rick crashed through the jungle to see Juliet with her flashlight up as she turned in a full circle trying to get her bearings. “Yeah, that scream was—” He stopped.

“Terrifying? Gut-wrenching?”

“Stop,” Rick held up a hand. “Listen.”

Water. He could hear running water.

“I was going to say close,” he said, moving forward.

“Where are you going?” Juliet demanded following him.

“There’s a river nearby,” he told her. “Water means survival. If he’s hurt, he’s going to stay close to water.”

As if she finally heard it, too, Juliet found another gear and flanked Rick, moving in tandem with him through the thick foliage. Rick heard a crack of sound on the radio and Juliet reported the second set of gunshots to be Rick taking out one of Devlin’s men. He heard Katsumoto reply that they’d incapacitated two more.

Just then, he saw it—a limp hand, adorned by a Cross of Lorraine ring, flung out over a cluster of Banyan tree roots.

“Thomas?”

“TC, we found him,” Juliet reported into the radio.

She pulled out the flare gun Katsumoto had given them. Rick smelled the pungent sulfur of the flare as he went to his knees next to the hand, a red glow illuminating the area around them. It took a moment to push the underbrush and massive leaves out of the way, but when he finally revealed Thomas, his gut turned to ice.

Thomas lay half in the water, his right shoulder and hand submerged, legs tangled in the vines and splattered with mud. His chest was bare, his filthy shirt having been used as a bandage around his middle, and what looked like a fresh burn branded into his pectoral. His skin was slick with blood, sweat, and mud, and his cargo shorts were saturated on one side with blood. The bruises Juliet had reported earlier were still visible, even in the waning light of dawn, and blood was caked into his eyebrow and hairline.

He was so pale. So _very_ pale.

“Oh, my God,” Juliet breathed, moving to his other side.

Rick reached out and tapped his friend’s face gently, wincing at the heat he felt there. “Hey, Thomas. You with me, pal?”

Thomas blinked sluggishly, his dark eyes rolling beneath his lids, his lashes tented with sweat.

“Hey, there you are,” Rick forced a grin into his voice. “Not the best place to take a nap, my man.”

“Rick?” Thomas’ voice grated the air between them, sending shrapnel of sound into Rick’s heart.

“Hey,” Rick smiled. “Long night, huh?”

“Gotta go, man,” Thomas, tried to roll to his side, pulling his hand from the river and pressing it to the ground to sit up. “Gotta keep moving.”

“Nah, now, how about you just lie still a second—” Rick tried to push Thomas down by gripping his bare shoulder. _God_ , he was burning up.

“Can’t!” Thomas pushed at him. “Gotta keep moving,” he curled a trembling fist into the edge of Rick’s shirt. “They’ll find us…they find us, we’re dead.”

Rick felt his eyes burn. Thomas wasn’t talking about Devlin’s men. He was talking about the Taliban.

“They’re not gonna find us, Thomas,” Rick promised him. “They’re gone, man. They’re all gone.”

Thomas kept hold of Rick’s shirt and twisted his neck to look around him. Rick saw his eyes hit Juliet then glance off as though she was just another figure from the jungle.

“Where’s Nuzo?” Thomas asked, his voice thin, strained.

“Oh, Tommy,” Rick breathed, the question having knocked the air from him lungs.

The jungle was lighting up around them as they heard bodies moving through the foliage. Rick brought his weapon up without releasing his hold on Thomas’ shoulder. He registered Juliet doing the same across from him. TC broke through first, followed closely by Katsumoto. They both raised their hands in surrender until Rick and Juliet lowered their weapons.

“Holy shit,” Katsumoto breathed when he caught sight of Thomas.

“We need rescue services out here now,” Juliet said, moving aside as TC splashed through a portion of the shallow river to mirror Rick on the other side of Thomas.

Katsumoto tried raising his officer on the radio.

“Hey, T.M.,” TC said softly, helping to brace the other man.

“You see Nuzo?” Thomas asked in a ragged voice, twisting his head around. “He…he was right there. Just…just there. Can’t…I can’t see him.”

Rick watched as TC’s face folded in a familiar pain. “He’s okay, man,” TC replied. “He went ahead…to check the path.”

Thomas nodded slowly, seeming to accept that. Rick felt his weight increase against their grip and he and TC gently eased Thomas out of the mud to more even ground, pushing back the foliage so that they could get at him.

“What’d you do to yourself, man?”

“They shot me,” Thomas said on a gasp.

Rick winced as he untied the ruined shirt and exposed the blood and mud poultice that Thomas had constructed. “You packed it with mud?”

“No more bullets,” Thomas said, the corner of his mouth bouncing up in a slight grin.

Rick grimaced; even if he’d had access to bullets, there was no way he’d have been able to treat this wound the same way Nuzo saved him before. He wet the ruined shirt and began to clean away the mud around the wound, hissing as Thomas arched away with a whimper.

TC was watching closely. “Through and through?” he asked.

“Looks like,” Rick muttered, pulling Thomas toward him slightly, exposing both holes in his side, and cursing as he saw the blood begin to run freely once more. “He had the right idea with the mud, apparently.”

“Here,” Juliet took off her outer shirt, now clad in only a loose-fitting tank top.

Rick took it from her and folded it into a pressure bandage. “You see any…,” his eyes darted around at the foliage surrounding them. “There—shapumvilla.”

“Say what, now?” TC drew his head back, confused.

“Long, narrow leaves, really green—see it over there?” Rick jutted his chin over TC’s shoulder. “It helps with coagulation, stops bleeding.”

“How the _hell_ did you know that?” Juliet exclaimed.

Rick shot her a glance as TC went to grab the leaves he indicated. “It pays to know things,” he replied. Pulling Thomas closer to him so that the other man was practically in his lap, he nodded at TC. “Crush them up, like with a rock, yeah, there you go. Now, we put it on the wound and wrap it and…well, hopefully, it keeps him from bleeding out.”

Thomas seemed vaguely aware of what they were talking about—or at least that they were trying to help him. He twisted his fist tighter in Rick’s shirt, smearing the Hawaiian print with mud and blood, and turned to better expose his side.

“You ready?” Rick said to him, pitching his voice low.

“Do it,” Thomas growled, and took a breath as TC smeared the crushed leaves against the two wounds.

They all flinched at Thomas’ broken, ragged cry. He tugged abruptly on Rick’s shirt, his neck arching back as he tried to both pull away from the pain and hold himself still at once. TC used Juliet’s shirt to put pressure against the wound and tie it around his waist.

“Can’t raise anyone on any of the channels,” Katsumoto suddenly appeared over TC’s shoulder. “We’re going to have to get back to the house and call for rescue.”

“You cover our six, Nuz?” Thomas slurred, blinking sluggishly up at Katsumoto.

The tall Asian man started, eyes darting from Rick to TC, then back to Thomas.

“Nuzo?” Thomas started to struggle upright, gasping and going white before Rick could press him back down.

“Yeah, he did, didn’t you, Nuz?” TC spoke up quickly, shooting a glance over his shoulder at Katsumoto.

Katsumoto nodded shakily. “We’re clear,” he said.

Thomas relaxed again at that. Juliet moved closer, having used one of the broad leaves to construct a make-shift cup, and eased the edge against Thomas’ lips, helping him swallow some water.

“There’s a body across the river,” she told them softly. “Looks to have been shot,” she glanced at Rick, “three times, in the chest.”

Rick looked back down at Thomas. The burn on his pectoral—it was from a heated muzzle. “Go check for Thomas’ weapon,” he said, his voice pitched low. “A Colt MKIV.”

Juliet handed Rick the leaf cup so that he could give Thomas more water and slipped away. Rick glanced up at Katsumoto.

“You know it was self-defense,” he said quickly. He nodded toward the muzzle burn. “The gun had to have been literally trapped between them.”

Katsumoto lifted a shoulder. “One less bad guy.”

Rick felt his shoulders sag with relief, and he turned his attention back to Thomas. He was starting to shake, Rick noticed. Trembling from his core outward.

“’s cold,” Thomas muttered, dark eyes rolling up to look at Rick. “Weird, huh? Cold in the desert?”

Rick nodded, pushing Thomas’ black hair away from his sweaty forehead. “So weird,” he agreed, half-smiling at the old joke.

“Detective,” Juliet called, splashing back across the river.

All but Thomas looked at her as she handed Katsumoto the Colt. Surprise taking a swipe at his expression, Katsumoto took the weapon and slid it into his back waistband.

“I’ll have a team come back and do a sweep,” he said, nodding his thanks.

Thomas groan softly, his trembling increasing. Rick looked down when he felt a tug on his shirt and saw that Thomas was curling his fist into the material tighter, as though pulling himself close to Rick would help him escape the pain.

Rick looked up at TC, then to Katsumoto. “We need to get him out of here; he’s burning up, and from the looks of things, he’s lost a _lot_ of blood.”

“We’re going to have to carry him,” Katsumoto said, grimacing.

“I’m ready,” Rick said, determined. He’d drag him out of there if he had to. “TC, you with me?”

TC nodded once, shifting until he was in position. “Just like before, you ready?” he asked.

Rick took a breath, then looked at Thomas.

“Hey, Thomas, you ready to get out of here?”

“Long as you’re comin’ with me,” Thomas slurred.

Rick smiled down at him, his gut clenching. “Got nowhere else to go, brother.”

TC and Rick clasped arms across Thomas’ back, his arms over theirs, hands resting on their shoulders. On a three-count, they stood, pulling Thomas up with them.

“ _Ahhhh_! Son of a _bitch_!” Thomas cried out weakly, gripping their shirts tightly as the motion pulled on his wound. “Oh, fuck that hurts. That _really_ hurts.”

“You got this, man,” Rick encouraged. “We’re right here with you.”

“That guy was fast,” Thomas panted, his head lolling on his shoulders as they started to move carefully along the make-shift path, Katsumoto in the lead, Juliet bringing up the rear. “D-didn’t even s-see the gun.”

The Korengal again, Rick knew. They’d said the same thing after Nuzo stopped Thomas from bleeding to death. They hadn’t even seen the gun.

“Yeah, but he doesn’t know Thomas Magnum, does he?” Rick said, keeping up with the memory. “Tigers tough.”

“Tigers t-tough,” Thomas repeated as they moved through the brush.

He hung between the two men, his feet alternating between stepping and dragging, unable to keep up the motion of walking for long. After several beats where there was no sound but their footsteps and Thomas’ ragged breathing, Rick felt Thomas’ weight suddenly shift.

“Rick….”

They stopped, Rick instinctively wrapping his free arm around Thomas’ chest as the smaller man seemed to sag.

“Rick—” Thomas gasped then, his legs disappearing on him and TC and Rick when to their knees on either side.

“I got you.”

They lay him on the ground, his head hanging back on a loose neck, his arms sliding from their shoulders. His eyelids fluttered and Rick put his hand against Thomas’ jaw, his fingers resting against his fever-hot cheek.

“Rick…,” Thomas wheezed. “’m s-sorry.”

Rick slid a hand up Thomas’ neck to the back of his friend’s head. His heart shook inside his chest, a voice in his head screaming at him a wordless sound of anguish.

Some things Rick just knew.

But not this. He didn’t want to know this moment.

“Nothing to be sorry for, man,” Rick said, and felt the weight of TC’s big hand on his shoulder, the other man focused on Thomas, just as he was. “Gonna get you back home, get you fixed up. You’ll see.”

He knew Juliet and Katsumoto were standing nearby, knew they were most likely trying to raise someone at the house, call for help, be of use…but right now it was just them.

Just him and Thomas and TC.

With Nuzo’s shadow shading them from the morning sun.

“’m sorry…’bout the camp…. ’n ‘bout…hurt…hurting you….”

Thomas’ breaths were harsh, quick and shallow; his eyes rolled, panicked, as though he were trying to find them.

“I’m right here, man,” Rick said, realizing belatedly that he been gripping Thomas’ hand so tightly in his own his knuckles were turning white.

Thomas’ gaze found him then and Rick felt those dark eyes pin him. There’d always been something lost in Thomas’ eyes, even when he was laughing. And this time was no different.

The lost boy seeking a home. An anchor.

“Rick….”

“I’m right here,” Rick repeated. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“Hurts, man…,” Thomas gasped, his voice sounding as though it was coming at them through a straw. His back arched slightly, his head pressing into the dirt of the jungle floor. “Aww, _fuck_ it hurts….”

“I know,” Rick rubbed the top of Thomas’ head, feeling helpless and angry all at once.

Thomas whimpered, a sound Rick had heard too often in the past and never wanted to hear again. It took an awful lot to get Thomas to make that sound and that fact alone had Rick’s gut clenching in fear.

“Hang in there, Tommy,” he said, rubbing his thumb across Thomas knuckles. “Gonna get you some help, okay?”

“’K,” Thomas murmured, breath puffing out through parted lips.

He blinked slowly, his gaze sliding to somewhere to the middle distance, and then without another sound, he went boneless in Rick’s grasp, eyes slipping closed.

“No,” Rick exhaled, shaking their clasped hands. “NO.”

He didn’t want to know this moment. It wasn’t something he would survive. He bent forward, pulling Thomas closer to him, a wail building at the back of his throat.

“He’s breathing,” TC said suddenly.

“What?” Rick gasped, looking up, his burning eyes blurring as he looked between TC and Thomas.

“Man, he’s breathing,” TC said more urgently, pushing to a crouch and gently pulling Thomas away from Rick’s chest.

Rick leaned forward, his cheek to Thomas’ mouth. Sure enough, there was air.

“Oh, thank God,” he breathed.

“Here, let me,” TC scooped one arm behind Thomas’ shoulders and another beneath his knees, picking him up in a bridal carry.

As he lifted him from the ground, a cell phone fell from Thomas’ pocket. Rick registered Katsumoto bending over to pick it up, but his eyes were on the way Thomas’ head and arm hung limply from TC’s grasp. He eased Thomas’ head up to TC’s shoulder and nodded, leading the way so TC didn’t have to push through any of the vines and leaves.

It took him a moment to realize that Juliet was next to him, and he’d almost be willing to swear there were tears on her face mingled with sweat.

“You okay?” he asked.

She shook her head. “I’m realizing I have made a gross misjudgment in character.”

Rick took a slow breath, glancing back to where TC carried Thomas, Katsumoto next to them.

“You said before,” Juliet continued, clearing her throat, then continuing. “You said that if Magnum hadn’t survived, you didn’t want to, either.”

Rick flinched, wondering what TC thought hearing that. Wondering if he already knew.

“Is it because of what TC told us in the car?”

Rick glanced back at TC again, then let his eyes linger on where Thomas lay slumped against TC’s chest before turning his eyes front.

“It’s because of…just who he is. The camp was hard on all of us, but…it was hardest on Thomas,” Rick told her.

The radio crackled, making them all jump. Katsumoto answered and looked up with a relieved smile when his officer responded. He instructed him to get an ambulance to the house and be ready to roll as soon as they got back—they were bringing a critically-injured man with them.

“See if you can find any clean towels, boil some water, get a clean space available for us in case there’s a delay in getting the bus up here,” Katsumoto instructed. “And see if there’s any kind of first aid in the house.”

 _“Roger that,”_ the officer replied, and with that the group seemed to collectively find another gear, heading every forward to the house.

After about another ten minutes, however, TC stumbled, taking a knee, Thomas jostle a bit in his arms.

“Our boy’s heavy,” TC panted, looking up at Rick.

“You could put him over your shoulder,” Rick frowned, assessing the situation. “But carefully, ‘cause any pressure on that wound—”

“Yeah, just need a minute,” TC said, shifting his grip on Thomas. “Catch my breath.”

“Here,” Rick held out his arms. “I’ll take a turn.”

“You kidding?” TC scoffed. “You’re basically the same size—”

“But I’m not,” Katsumoto spoke up, surprising all of them. “I’ll take a shift while you rest.”

Rick blinked at the police detective in outright shock. “You’re… _volunteering_ to carry him?”

“We’re wasting time talking about it,” Katsumoto grumbled, crouching lower and putting his shoulder into Thomas’ chest, then shifting the pliant man across his shoulders, the motion causing the wound to hit Katsumoto’s back and Thomas flinched and cried out, though he didn’t wake.

“He better stay out for this,” Katsumoto grumbled as he hefted the unconscious man, hooking one arm around Thomas’ knee and grasping the man’s loose hand in his. “And the rest of you are sworn to silence.”

When they didn’t reply, Katsumoto glared over at the other three.

In unison, they lifted their hands in surrender, speaking at once.

“Not a word.”

“Won’t hear it from me.”

“Lips are sealed.”

Thomas’ head rested against Katsumoto’s bicep, his free hand hanging down the man’s back. Without another word, Katsumoto moved forward and Rick flanked him with TC and Juliet following closely.

“You weren’t exaggerating,” Katsumoto huffed. “He’s burning up.”

“His immune system is for shit,” Rick muttered. “We’re all like that, though,” he added. “Lack of nutrition…medical aid…hell, sunlight. It’ll do a number on your body. It about killed him when we got back to Germany.”

“Infection?” Juliet asked.

“Infection, starvation, you name it,” TC’s voice rumbled from behind them.

Rick’s eyes tracked the vines lacing the ground, clearing the way for Katsumoto, as he listened to TC’s memories.

“There wasn’t much we could fight off for a while there,” TC continued. “They had me on calcium injections for my arm, had Rick downing fifty, sixty B-12 caplets a day…, but T.M., he…,” TC paused, and Rick knew he was shaking his head. “He was already hollowed out before we even escaped. They had him hooked up to so many IVs of stuff. Bags and bags of vitamins and antibiotics and supplements.”

“He looked like a science experiment,” Rick remembered.

“What, uh…,” Katsumoto asked, hefting his burden a bit as he walked on. “What did he mean about being sorry he hurt you?”

Rick felt the jungle go quiet around them. TC didn’t say a word, waiting him out. Katsumoto pushed forward, stalwartly keeping Thomas’ limp body balanced.

“Tommy…blames himself for us being captured,” Rick said carefully. “It wasn’t his fault, but…he won’t…he can’t let himself off the hook.” Rick shrugged; hands spread out at his sides for a moment before dropping them once more. “When we were there, they didn’t go easy on any of us—but, man they loved to torture him. And he’d draw the attention to himself, trying to keep the guards from us. It was the only way he could think to protect us. When he was gone, down in that hole, we…,” he found he had to clear emotion from his throat to force the memories forward, “we didn’t know if he was dead or alive, and then they’d bring him back to us….”

He couldn’t continue. The images of Thomas, sick and breakable, bounced before his eyes, mingling with the dirt and dust of the jungle floor.

“We’d…pull together to keep him alive,” TC continued. “Nuzo would tell him not to be an idiot, to keep away from the guards. But…as soon as he was able to stand on his own, the minute one of the guards went after one of us, he’d get in their face. Distract them.”

“He did more than keep you from getting hurt,” Katsumoto gasped, forced to stop.

He nodded tiredly when TC moved back over to take Thomas from him, helping the other man adjust the weight of his friend. Rick tried to ignore the worry gnawing at his gut about the fact that Thomas hadn’t woken once with these transfers. He focused instead on the fact that Thomas was breathing, was alive.

“He kept you focused on a common goal,” Katsumoto continued, dragging an arm across his forehead. “My guess is he learned that in SEAL training. I’ve read it’s one of the only ways some guys don’t ring out. Keep a group focused on a common goal and they can survive almost anything.” He stepped in beside TC and Rick tried to ignore the smear of blood on his shoulder and back from Thomas’ wound. “Keeping him alive kept you alive.”

Rick nodded with a small smile. “You pick up on more than I realized, Detective.”

Katsumoto frowned. “Thanks, I think.”

“We have to be getting close,” Juliet commented, looking at her watch. “We’ve been walking for almost thirty minutes.”

“It’s right there, through the break in those trees,” Rick told her.

“You’re sure?” Juliet questioned.

“My man’s a sniper, Higgy,” TC reminded her. “Not much he doesn’t see.”

Rick let himself grin at that.

He was right; through the break in the trees, they saw the house. Juliet and Katsumoto hurried forward to make sure the house was clear and the supplies were available. When TC and Rick reached the house with Thomas, there was a bath towel spread over the kitchen table and the other supplies Katsumoto asked for were sitting on the counter.

“Here, set him down here,” Katsumoto helped guide TC through the door so that they didn’t hit Thomas’ head on the door frame.

In the light, he looked even worse—bloody, filthy, sweaty, and so pale he was practically gray. Rick felt his gut clench, his mind tracking back to a dusty cell with a bucket of tepid water and stolen antibiotics. He rubbed the back of his neck.

“TC, man…,” he muttered.

“He’s still breathing,” TC said, his low voice a comfort. “Just concentrate on that.”

Juliet was a blur of motion in comparison to their fearful paralysis. She used the towel and water provided by the officer and began to wipe the mud and blood from Thomas’ face, neck and chest, avoiding the make-shift bandage. When TC reached for it, she put out a hand to stop him.

“No, leave it,” she instructed. “He can’t afford to lose any more blood.”

“Where’s that damn bus?” Katsumoto asked the officer lurking in the doorway.

“I’ll find out,” the man replied.

Rick moved to Thomas’ head, pushing his fingers through his friend’s sweaty, black hair. Thomas turned his head with the motion, pressing into the hollow of Rick’s hand as though seeking contact.

“Hey, man,” Rick said softly. “You with us?”

“Where…?” Thomas whispered, not opening his eyes. He shuddered as awareness visibly washed over him.

“Hey, Tommy, hey,” Rick smiled. “You’re okay. We found you, man.”

Thomas’ eyes rolled beneath his lids until he was able to pry them open. “Not the jungle.”

Rick kept his smile in place. “Not the jungle.”

“Everybody…get out?”

Rick nodded, glancing up a TC, then back at Thomas. “Yeah, buddy. We got out. You just rest, okay?”

Thomas closed his eyes, swallowing hard before forcing them open once more. “Tell…Kats….”

Rick straightened his shoulders. This was new.

“Katsumoto?” Rick asked, looking over for the police detective.

“Pictures…,” Thomas whispered. “On phone. Somethin’…real.”

Rick’s eyes found Katsumoto and saw him frown, then pull Thomas’ cell phone from his pocket. He stepped forward, taking Thomas’ hand and used his thumb to unlock the phone then blinked in surprise, scrolling through a screen.

“Son of a bitch,” he murmured.

“What is it?” Juliet asked.

Katsumoto looked up at the group, then down at Thomas. “Evidence.”

Thomas’ brow furrowed and Rick pushed his fingers through his friend’s hair once more as that seemed to soothe him before.

“Ambulance is still ten minutes out,” the office said suddenly from the doorway.

“Here,” Juliet moved closer, a glass of water in her hand.

Rick took it with a nod, then lifted Thomas’ head so that he could drink. He murmured encouragement as Thomas swallowed greedily, emptying the glass. Rick handed it back to Juliet for more as Thomas blinked his eyes open.

“Knew y’d find me,” he whispered.

“Gonna put a tracker on you,” Rick muttered, his hand still on the back of Thomas’ head. “Right here, in your neck, so we can’t lose you.”

“You were there,” Thomas whispered. “Whole time.”

“Yeah, man,” Rick replied, tears surging forward, threatening to spill. “I know.”

“You…’k?”

Rick half smiled, feeling the choking hand of emotion at his throat. “Yeah, man, I’m good.”

“Good,” Thomas exhaled, his eyes fluttering closed. “’s okay…doesn’t…doesn’t really hurt…anymore.”

Thomas exhaled slowly, and suddenly Rick was truly afraid for the first time since leaving the damn camp.

“Thomas?”

The room seemed to go quiet around them; he could hear the filament in the ceiling light burning and ticking.

“Tommy?”

The weight of Thomas’ head in his hand was too much; his friend’s body lax on the table. It was a strange weight. As if everything that kept Thomas moving had simply slipped from him with that last breath. It was a weight that pressed on Rick like nothing had before.

“No…,” he whispered, gripping Thomas’ limp hand tightly. “No, no, hey…hey, Tommy. Open your eyes.” He slipped his hand from behind Thomas head and patted his bruised cheek. “Tommy, open your eyes.”

The world faded around him, fog once more collecting at the edges of his vision. He pulled Thomas up by the shoulders, one hand going behind his lax neck to support his head and he cradled the smaller man against him.

“Open your eyes, Tommy,” he said, hearing more than feeling the tears as he clutched his friend’s heated body against him. “Don’t do this. Not now, not like this.”

A dark hand thrust itself between his chest and Thomas’ face and he registered that TC was feeling for breath, then for a pulse.

“Oh, shit,” TC practically growled. “Dammit, Thomas!”

“Move.” Katsumoto’s bark came from a million miles away. And yet suddenly he was right at Rick’s elbow. “Move, _now_.”

Rick’s hands were shaking as he released his friend, Thomas’ head rolling loosely against the table, one arm hanging free. He watched with a sort of numb detachment as Katsumoto checked Thomas’ airway, then rested an ear against his chest before climbing up on the table and straddling Thomas hips, his hands folded together and pressed against Thomas’ sternum.

“Shall I take breaths?” Juliet was asking.

Rick blinked, confused. What was happening right now? TC had a hand at his arm, holding him up, holding him back. He didn’t register that his hands were clenched in fists at his sides until the bigger man took one in his hand and covered it with his long fingers.

“We just have to keep the blood flowing until the EMTs get here,” Katsumoto was saying, pressing hard against Thomas pliant chest, puffing out a gasping count as he did so.

Rick watched in a daze as Thomas battered chest flexed with the heavy thrusts. After a count of one hundred, Katsumoto stopped, pressed his ear to Thomas’ chest, then frowned fiercely as he resumed his thrusts.

“C’mon, Magnum,” Katsumoto growled breathlessly as he pressed against Thomas’ rib cage. “I carried you through the freaking jungle,” Rick heard something pop in Thomas’ chest, “don’t think you’re getting away without me holding that over your head.”

Rick felt his own heart tremble as Katsumoto paused once more and listened. The high-pitch whine began to echo in his ears once more when Katsumoto straightened up with a curse.

“Goddammit, Magnum,” Katsumoto curled a fist and thumped against Thomas’ sternum once, hard. They all paused for a moment, then Katsumoto thumped him hard again, just as the welcoming wail of an ambulance siren was heard in the distance.

Katsumoto leaned back on his haunches, his weight hovering over Thomas’ hips.

“Do it again,” Rick heard himself order, pulling away from TC’s grip and moving to Thomas’ head. “Hit him again.”

“Rick….” Juliet started, her voice soft, a suggestion of retreat. Of acceptance.

Rick ignored her, because _no_. No goddamn way was he accepting this. Not _this._ Reaching forward, he curled a fist full of Katsumoto’s shirt in his grip. “Hit him again!”

He released the police detective’s shirt and moved back to Thomas’ head.

“C’mon, Tommy,” Rick entreated, his fingers in Thomas’ hair. “C’mon, man, you got this. You crawled your way out of that hole, over and over. You got us out of that damn cave. You’re _not_ going out like this. I won’t fucking let you.”

Katsumoto thumped Thomas’ sternum a third time, the force of it shaking the smaller man’s body, and suddenly Thomas dragged in a ragged, rough lungful of air, his head tipping back and mouth dropping open like a drowning man.

“That’s it,” Rick encouraged, tears burning his eyes, blurring his vision. “That’s it man, one more like that.”

Thomas coughed weakly as a commotion sounded behind Rick and the EMTs breached the entrance of the kitchen. He stayed at Thomas’ head, his hand in his friend’s hair as Katsumoto climbed off the table and Juliet gave the EMTs stats and Thomas gasped for breath.

Rick registered someone putting an oxygen mask over Thomas’ face and another putting a C-collar around his neck while an IV was started in his arm and then for the first time since calling TC the morning before, Rick was relegated to the position of observer. He watched as the EMTs rolled Thomas gently to a backboard, moving him to the stretcher and then into the back of the ambulance.

“I’ll take you straight there,” Katsumoto promised, sounding as weary as Rick felt as they headed out of the house and up the long driveway.

“What a fucking night,” Rick breathed, rubbing his neck. He was so tired he felt himself shivering. “We get him through this, man…no more.”

“You know there’s gonna be more,” TC said, his voice low and soft as they climbed into Katsumoto’s car. “There’s always more. It’s just who he is.”

“I have to admit,” Katsumoto said as he climbed behind the wheel. “I’m not sure what to with this picture you’re painting. It’s not the Magnum I thought I knew.”

“I quite agree,” Juliet replied solemnly from the front seat. “I’ve spent so much time being annoyed with him, I didn’t realize it was a…a front.”

“Well, not entirely,” Rick shrugged, leaning his forehead against the cool window. “It’s part of him, too. But…none of us are only one thing, are we?”

“Guess I should take the word of a sniper wearing a Hawaiian shirt,” Katsumoto glanced at him in the rear-view mirror.

“Guess you should,” Rick replied, meeting his eyes. He leaned back against the seat, watching the world pass by outside his window, gut clenching at the thought of Thomas waking up—alone and afraid—without them near. “Let’s just get there, man.”

“We’re getting there,” Katsumoto replied. “We’re getting there.”


	5. Chapter 5

We’ve taken different paths and traveled different roads  
I know we’ll always end up on the same one when we’re old  
And when you’re in the trenches and you’re under fire  
I will cover you  
\- _Brother_ , Kodaline

_Juliet_

It was an interesting thing to be witness to the human condition. To see the ripple effect one person could have on many. Often, an impact such as the one she was seeing isn’t observed or appreciated until an individual is gone—and it’s captured in a tearful eulogy or etched in an epitaph.

But with these men, she was watching it play out before her eyes, and it quite took her breath away.

As though sensing Rick and TC were walking a very thin thread of control, Katsumoto hurried ahead of them to the nurse’s station, flashed his badge, and asked about a patient brought in by ambulance roughly ten minutes ahead of their arrival.

“He’s in the ER,” Katsumoto reported. “They don’t know much yet.”

“One of us needs to be in there with him when he comes to,” Rick told the police detective.

“I don’t know if that’s—”

“He’s not trying to be difficult,” TC interjected. “We just know from experience what that man is like when he’s hurt and scared.”

Katsumoto lifted a hand, nodding. “I understand, but it’s not my call. They will come get us when they know more.”

Juliet watched Rick and TC exchange an unreadable glance, then turn toward the comfortably appointed waiting room. She saw that it had couches and broader-based chairs and included a coffee bar. _Nice_. Now if it just had a sweater; the air conditioning was rather unforgiving.

“I’m so sorry to trouble you,” Juliet turned back to the nurse’s station. “But you wouldn’t have a spare scrub top I could borrow?”

The dark-haired nurse smiled at her sympathetically, careworn lines crinkling around her eyes. “Sure, honey. Come with me.”

Juliet followed the older woman around a corner and paused outside of a large window while the woman went to get her a warmer shirt. As she watched through the window, she realized she was seeing into the exam bay where they were treating Magnum.

She watched, transfixed as they hurried around him, adding an IV in his other arm, pulling the filthy, make-shift bandage away from his bloody side. She winced as she saw them palpate his chest and belly and saw Thomas’ neck arch, his head pressing back against the pillow in pain.

They kicked a wheel brake on the bed free and began to wheel him hastily down a short hallway.

“Friend of yours?”

Juliet jumped at the unexpected voice. She turned to see the older nurse standing next to her with a scrub top in her hands. Juliet nodded as she took the top and slid it on over her head.

“Do you know where they’re taking him?”

“My guess would be x-ray or CT,” the nurse replied, her brown eyes soft as she studied Juliet. “I could keep tabs on him, if you like?”

Juliet smiled. “Thank you….”

“Alani.”

“Thank you, Alani,” she said, holding her hand out for the other woman to shake. “I’m Juliet. And I’m going to be waiting with a few men over there. They’re Thomas’…brothers,” she tilted her head, offering a version of the truth she hoped the nurse would accept, “and they’re…scared for him.”

Alani nodded. “I’ll let you know as soon as I find out anything.”

Returning to the waiting room, Juliet saw that Katsumoto had helped himself to a cup of coffee, but Rick and TC were sitting next to each other, staring into the middle distance. TC leaned back against the wall, his arms crossed over his chest, and Rick was bent over, his elbows on his knees. Sighing, Juliet fixed two cups of coffee and carried them over to the men. At this point, they all had been up over twenty-four hours and the toll was beginning to show.

Handing the men the coffee, she said softly, “It seems they’re taking him back for x-rays.”

Rick’s head bounced up so fast Juliet winced in sympathy of his neck muscles. “They told you this?”

“I befriended a nurse,” Juliet explained, gesturing to her attire. “She promised to keep us updated.”

“Holy shit,” Katsumoto suddenly whispered from the corner of the room near the coffee machine.

“What?” TC asked, coming alive and pulling away from the wall.

Katsumoto crossed the room to them, holding out Magnum’s phone. “Looks like we were wrong on multiple counts.”

Rick stood up, taking the phone from Katsumoto and Juliet peered at the screen across his arm. He was thumbing through pictures. Of…them? Rick at the club, TC fixing his helicopter, Juliet doing yoga.

“What is…I don’t understand,” Juliet replied, confused.

“Look at the last one,” Katsumoto told them.

Rick thumbed the image forward and suddenly Juliet saw herself once more, only this time Magnum was also in the shot—as were the crosshairs of a rifle.

“Holy shit,” Rick murmured in agreement with the detective.

“Seems Iona was sending Magnum a message,” Katsumoto stated.

Juliet felt the blood drain from her face; she stepped back, covering her mouth with a suddenly very cold hand. Rick looked at her over his shoulder.

“You said he was acting like you were under fire,” he reminded her.

She nodded shakily. “Yes…he,” she swallowed, pulling her hand away from her mouth and squaring her shoulders. She was a big girl. She could take this hit. “He tackled me from the pagoda as though there was a—”

“Sniper rifle trained on you,” TC finished.

“Yes, quite.”

Katsumoto dragged a hand down his face. “I was so off on this one,” he muttered. “And if he doesn’t—”

“Do _not_ finish that sentence,” Rick growled.

Katsumoto nodded, regarding Rick solemnly. “I need to get to the station, get Meghan Iona and her sons in protective custody—”

“And Kumu,” Juliet interjected.

“And Kumu,” Katsumoto agreed. “And make sure I’ve rounded up all of Iona’s minions. There’s enough on that phone to put him away for a very, very long time.” He sighed, rolling his neck as he plucked the phone from Rick’s hand. “Five-O is going to have a field day with this one.”

“We’ll keep you informed, Detective,” Juliet promised.

“Thanks,” Katsumoto replied, his gaze glancing off her and landing on TC and Rick.

“Thanks for carrying him out of the jungle,” TC said, holding out a hand for Katsumoto to shake.

Rick didn’t offer a hand, but he did shift his posture to a less defensive stance. “And for not letting him die on that table.”

“Pretty sure straddling Thomas Magnum was the strangest thing I’ve ever done,” Katsumoto said with a half-smile, a desperate attempt at levity. He turned to leave when Rick’s voice stopped him once more.

“Hey, Katsumoto,” Rick called, stepping forward, his arms wrapped around his chest. “See what you can find out about Aaron Shepherd’s murder, will ya? Thomas is going to want to know.”

Katsumoto nodded, then saluted them with Magnum’s cell phone and left the room. Everyone sat down for a moment and Juliet watched with a bit of numb detachment as more worried-looking people filtered in, some being called back to the exam area, some consulting with a doctor or nurse off to the side.

The activity of an emergency room was never predictable, she’d learned. There was no constant ebb and flow—it was more of an all or nothing feeling. When the doctor came in with Alani at his side, they were alone in the waiting room once more.

“Family of Thomas Magnum?”

As one, all three of them stood up. The doctor frowned slightly, but Alani stepped forward.

“These are Mr. Magnum’s brothers,” she stated without guile.

The doctor’s sharp eyes darted to Rick’s face, then TC’s and something about his demeanor shifted. “I’m Dr. Yeats. Let’s sit down over here,” he said, guiding them to a more private corner.

The trio followed, silently, and Juliet found her heart fluttering against her ribs in anticipation.

“Mr. Magnum is very ill,” Yeats began without preamble. “He’s suffering from hypovolemic shock, and the gunshot wound is infected—not only from exposure, but the bullet nicked the outer wall of his small intestine and the infection was building internally as well. Do you know how long he went without aid?”

“We estimate approximately fourteen hours,” Juliet replied promptly, slightly amazed that her voice was steady.

Yeats nodded. “He also appears to have sustained quite a beating, though the bruising indicates it was longer ago than fourteen hours.” He paused. “Do you know the circumstances of this…damage? Was Mr. Magnum tortured?”

“Not this time,” TC muttered.

Yeats’ frown deepened.

“What he means is,” Rick clarified, “the bruises…the beating, it wasn’t from torture. Thomas is a Private Investigator and day before yesterday he tangled with the guys who ended up shooting him and leaving him for dead in the jungle. He was on a case.”

Yeats was not willing to let TC’s comment go. “But he has been tortured.”

Juliet watched Rick and TC as they shifted once more—TC leaning back against the wall, Rick leaning forward, braced against his knees.

“There are several scars that could have been from his time in the service,” Yeats said, revealing he’d at least given Magnum’s chart a cursory view. Juliet had no idea how much detail was included in the medical records available in Hawaii. “But some are…rather vicious.”

“A little over three years ago,” Rick finally spoke up, “the three of us and one other buddy were captured by the Taliban. We were held for eighteen months before we escaped. And yeah, Thomas was tortured.”

Yeats nodded slowly, absorbing this information. “We are prepping him for surgery now,” he told them. “We’re going to attempt to clean out the wound and the infection. He’s getting volumes of blood, antibiotics, and fluids. He’s young and strong, so I am hopeful about this surgery, but his body has been severely traumatized. Recovery is not going to be easy.”

Rick nodded, straightening up. “We need to be with him, Doc,” he said, a determined glint in his blue eyes. “We won’t get in the way; we’ll let your medical staff do their job. Be we can’t let him wake up alone.”

Yeats looked down, pulling on his lower lip, as though considering Rick’s words.

“He was…they kept him away from us for long periods of time,” Rick continued. “In a dark hole, exposed to the elements. And with his head all messed up right now, it’s just….”

“Is he a danger to himself?” Yeats asked. “Or to my staff?”

“No,” TC spoke up, his low voice a punch of sound in the quiet corner. “Not if we’re with him.”

Yeats looked over his shoulder at Alani, who nodded.

“I’ll work out the specifics,” she reassured them. “My sister works up on ICU; she’ll help us out, don’t worry.”

“Thank you,” Juliet replied for the three of them.

“My advice to you would be to go home, shower, eat, sleep, then come back,” Yeats told them. “The surgery is going to take a while, and he won’t be awake for several hours when it’s done.”

They nodded, but Juliet’s gut told her they were going to ignore him. When the doctor left, she regarded Rick and TC for a moment before speaking.

“I will go get us some new clothes, and some food,” she offered. “You two look like you just walked out of a war zone.”

Rick looked down at himself as though only realizing his pink pants and Hawaiian shirt were smeared with mud and blood. TC didn’t move. She couldn’t read them in this moment. The exhaustion was real and palpable, but there was something else there. An invisible wall that set her firmly on the outside.

“Thanks, Juliet,” Rick accepted, finally.

It wasn’t until she stepped out into the mid-day sun that she realized she didn’t have a car available. Sighing, she dug into her pocket for her cell phone when the officer who was at the house with them walked up to her.

“Miss Higgins?” he smiled. “Detective Katsumoto asked me to wait for you. Said one of you was going to need a ride.”

“Did he?” she smiled back. “Seems your boss is a pretty good detective.”

“He’s a good man,” the officer nodded. “I was, uh…I was surprised to see how worried he was about Mr. Magnum, though.”

“And why’s that?” Juliet asked as she followed the young man to the police cruiser.

“Always thought he hated the guy,” the officer opened the passenger door for Juliet. “He’s pretty constantly running him down at the station. But then…when he was giving him CPR, the look on his face….” The officer shook his head.

“I suppose there’s room for all of us to change our minds, when given the right details,” Juliet replied.

* * *

_Thomas_

Something was wrong.

He was burning, the air pressing against him with barbed hands. He couldn’t find his breath and _holy shit_ his side hurt. Someone was stabbing him, repeatedly. He wasn’t so much regaining consciousness as he was compiling a crescendo of pain and over-stimulation.

Taking a sharp breath, he tried to reach for whatever was suffocating him, his arms heavy and sluggish, the movement uncoordinated and painful. A hand—like a heated brand—clasped his and his senses were hit with a new barrage of disconnected, disjointed information.

He could smell the damp, mildewed air of the cave, the weighted dust from the hole, the dank mud of the jungle. There was a dull roar—like white noise or the sound of rain—tamping down his eardrums and he could taste the metallic tang of his own blood. He felt like he was falling and caught in a too-tight grip at the same time—his body rapidly shifting between being set on fire and bathed in ice.

A scream—like a high-pitched machine—sounded off to his right and Thomas’ breathing hammered through his dry, parted lips. Whatever was on his face caught his panting breaths and shoved it back at him so that he felt he was choking on air.

He’d felt this sensation before. In the cave. When they waterboarded him. Before throwing him in the hole.

And they were going to do it again, they were going to do it again, they were going to do it again.

He couldn’t go back there, not there, not now, they’d gotten out, they were out they were out they were out—

Hands pressed on his shoulders, voices swam around him with meaningless words and Thomas’ body shook. He couldn’t fight them. And his friends were going to die.

They were going to die.

Because of him.

* * *

_Juliet_

By the time she returned, hours had passed. She’d taken the doctor’s advice, showered, eaten, gathered a change of clothes for all, and picked up water and protein bars for Rick and TC. She was informed by Alani that Thomas was out of surgery and in a room in ICU, but it didn’t look good.

“What does that mean, exactly?” Juliet asked, needing to ground herself in facts before confronting the two soldiers who stood guard over their friend.

Alani consulted a hand-written note. “Dr. Yeats said that his heart stopped once on the table but were able to resuscitate him. The infection was bad and while they were able to repair the damage from the bullet, they couldn’t get it all. He has a very high fever and his heart is weak from the blood loss.”

She looked up from the note, her eyes soft once more. “I’m sorry, Juliet. I will say a prayer for him.”

Juliet swallowed past the lump in her throat. “Thank you, Alani.”

She stepped onto the lift and leaned against the wall as she watched the numbers light up. He _had to_ survive this. There was no other option. He had to at least offer her the courtesy of changing her opinion of him.

Facts slipped through her mind on a disjointed reel and as the door opened, she felt slightly lightheaded when they landed on the memory of Thomas pulling her from the pagoda to the ground, covering her with his body because he thought they were under sniper attack. He’d saved her life.

And she’d treated him like shit in return.

“Oh, you’re surviving this, Magnum,” she muttered as she stepped out to the ICU floor. “I won’t hear of any other outcome.”

She was directed by Alani’s sister, Lili, to a room at the far edge of the nurse’s station. Each room was private, with a wide glass door that slid aside or could be pulled free to allow space for a crash cart and team. A privacy curtain was pulled to on the inside of the door and Juliet paused at the nurse’s station before approaching.

“How is he?”

Lili grimaced and Juliet was struck by the family resemblance between the two nurses when they showed sympathy.

“He shouldn’t be awake yet, but he’s fighting the sedatives,” she revealed. “He’s had some pretty rough reactions.”

“Allergic reactions?” Juliet asked.

Lili shook her head. “Nightmares, more like. He’s disoriented, combative. But his body is so weak, he can’t really do much damage. And having his brothers close seems to be helping.”

Juliet nodded, and smiled her thanks before moving to the door and pausing just outside. She could hear the various steady beeps from the monitors she imagined to be flanking either side of Thomas’ bed. Her face pulled into a pained frown when she heard Thomas’ voice.

“We got out…we got out….”

God, he sounded wrecked, the usual lilting timber ragged and stretched.

“Easy, Tommy,” Rick soothed. “You’re okay, man. You’re safe.”

“Don’t let ‘em die….”

“Jesus, TC,” Rick croaked. “He’s shaking so much right now.”

“I know, man,” TC replied.

“My fault…’s my fault….”

“I’ll get the nurse,” TC offered. “Maybe they can up his pain meds.”

“No, wait,” Rick said. “He’s calming down. And I think it’s the pain meds that do this to him. Remember Germany?”

“Not like I can forget.”

Juliet almost reached out to part the curtain and step inside when a sound stopped her. It was a sob, pulled from a place so private that it froze her in her tracks. For a moment she couldn’t tell which man had made the sound until she heard TC’s voice.

“I got you. I got you, man.”

“Shit, I’m sorry,” Rick gasped, his voice thick with emotion and Juliet could hear as he tried to swallow the tears and regain control. “Sorry, TC, man. I just. I’m tired is all.”

“And you’re scared and you’re hurting,” TC filled in, his voice low, soft, steady. “It’s like you got a limit on your tears, man. You let a few go, and then you pull all that pain back inside and hold it tight so it can’t escape.”

“You don’t need to deal with this,” Rick protested.

“Maybe I do,” TC replied, and Juliet heard the soft huff as he sat on something—possibly the edge of Thomas’ bed. “Maybe I need to know you’re still as messed up as me. As Thomas. Maybe I need to see that guy who cried and held onto him all night every time they brought him back to us, man. Maybe I need to know it’s okay I feel that way, too.”

“It is,” Rick returned quickly.

“So, what?” TC challenged. “It’s okay for me to cry, and it’s okay for Thomas to be scared, but _you_ gotta hold it all together? Thought we said Thomas was our glue, not you.”

Rick was silent a moment and then Juliet heard him utter a wet laugh. “Thomas said I was our heart.”

“He’s not wrong there,” TC muttered.

“He was half out of his mind with exhaustion—it was after Higgins guilted him into washing the Ferrari.”

Juliet winced at that. They were right. She had layered on the guilt.

“Rick, man,” TC sighed. “Sometimes…pain cuts so deep that you need to cry every single tear that’s inside you. There’s nothing wrong with that. If you don’t, you end up with a backlog and it chokes up your whole system.”

“You make me sound like a helicopter engine.”

“It’s not that much different.”

There was a quiet beat. There were two kinds of pain in the world, Juliet realized. The kind that hurts and the kind that alters. And both were caught inside that small ICU room.

“Looks like he’s sleeping now,” Rick observed. “Sure doesn’t like that oxygen mask, though.”

“Well, I’d prefer he keep breathing, so it stays,” TC declared.

Juliet decided to stop her voyeuristic behavior and parted the curtain, stepping quietly inside.

“Gents,” she greeted them. “I have clothes and food.”

“Oh, you beautiful Brit,” Rick stood from where he’d been perched on the only chair in the room.

She smiled at him, handing over the bag and watched as they silently communicated who would go change first. She didn’t look at Magnum quite yet, instead allowing her eyes to take in the room—a broad window seat next to an oversized square window, curtains pulled. A sink in the back of the room with cabinets on either side. One chair that very obviously pushed into a make-shift bed. Monitors, IV poles, subdued lighting…and Magnum.

“Oh my,” she breathed as took in the sight of him.

The blood and mud had been cleaned away, the cuts on his face had been stitched and bandaged, and he did indeed have an oxygen mask on, but it was the pallor, the sunken eyes, the way his dark hair spun around his head.

He looked ancient and young at once, and she felt something pang in her chest at the way his body seemed to tremble even as he lay unconscious under the blankets with wires snaking beneath the hospital gown at all angles.

TC seemed to take pity on her and moved closer to rest a hand on her shoulder.

“He’s going to be okay, Higgy,” he tried to reassure her. “He’s strong.”

She nodded and allowed TC to maneuver her to sit on the chair.

“He should sleep for a while,” TC told her. “Or so they said. He keeps trying to wake up, though.” He chuckled. “Our boy’s a fighter.”

“That much has been made very clear over the last forty-eight hours,” Juliet murmured. “Why does he insist it’s his fault you were captured by the Taliban?”

TC took a slow breath, then sank down on the window seat. “That’s not really my story to tell,” he said. “Basically, someone Thomas trusted—someone we all trusted, but Thomas most of all—betrayed us. And we found out when we were at the first camp location. After that, Thomas made it his mission to try to keep us as safe as he could.”

Juliet quietly watched the man she thought to be nothing more than a playboy and free loader breathe shakily, on the bed before her, the heart monitor alternately spiking and steadying.

“When Robin… _informed_ me that there would be someone living in his guest house, he gave me some words of caution,” she told TC. _Handle with care_. She’d had no idea what he’d meant at that time, but she was starting to get a glimpse of it now. “I’m afraid I ignored him.”

TC chuckled. “Yeah, well, Robin says a lot of shit. Half the time you don’t know if it’s a line from one of his damn stories, or if it’s really him talking to you.”

“You knew him well?” She asked. “Before now, I mean.”

TC nodded. “As much as anyone can really _know_ Robin. We were on his protection detail whenever he was downrange. He took a liking to Thomas and the two of them were pretty much inseparable. Nuzo watched them like some kind of freaking Italian mother hen. He knew Robin was going to get Thomas hurt one day.”

Juliet half-turned in the chair to face TC. “Why is that?”

“Because Robin was—”

“Reckless,” Rick interjected as he returned to the room, looking human once more.

“I was going to say fearless…but yeah, reckless is better.”

“Thanks for the threads, Juliet,” Rick smiled at her. He’d clearly had a make-shift shower and now that he was dressed in clean clothes, seemed almost back to his old self. “You’re up, buddy.” He tossed the duffel to TC and took up his post at the side of Thomas’ bed.

Juliet smoothly shifted from the chair to the window seat and gestured for Rick to take the chair. When TC left the room, Juliet pressed forward.

“So, Robin was reckless?”

Rick huffed. “And singular minded. When he got an idea in his head, he couldn’t let it go until he made it a reality. Even if that _idea_ was an article on how war impacted the women and children in Taliban-controlled areas of Afghanistan.”

Juliet’s eyebrows bounced up. “And he’d have to have first-hand information, I imagine.”

Rick nodded. “And Thomas watched his back. Every step of the way.”

“Who watched Thomas’ back?” Juliet asked, lips quirking into a smile.

“You can see a lot from the site of a sniper rifle,” Rick replied enigmatically.

“Nuz…,” Thomas muttered, brows pulled together across the bridge of his nose.

Rick leaned forward and collected Thomas’ limp hand, folding his fingers around the pulse oximeter on the other man’s index finger.

“Yeah, Nuzo watched your back, too, buddy,” Rick replied. “He didn’t let you out of his sight, did he?”

“Sorry….” Thomas whispered. “’m so sorry….”

Rick sighed, brushing Thomas’ short hair back from his forehead. “I wish you could let that go.”

Lili stepped through the curtain with a tray of needles and bottles of clear liquids. “Dr. Yeats wants to try a different pain med and a new antibiotic. Mr. Magnum needs to rest to heal, and he’s not getting there like this.”

Rick and Juliet nodded and watched as Lili injected the medication into Magnum’s IV. The result was almost instantaneous. Thomas visibly relaxed into the bed and the heart monitor picked up a steady, calm beat rather than the erratic cadence of before.

“Wow,” Rick commented, blinking.

Lili smiled. “Dr. Yeats pulled Mr. Magnum’s full file and saw the different treatments he’d been given when you were in Germany. He thought this might do the trick.”

“If he sleeps through the night, tell Yeats he’s my new hero,” Rick grinned.

“I’ll make a note of it,” Lili replied.

When TC returned, Juliet bid both men goodbye and told them she’d be back in the morning—she knew they wouldn’t want her lingering all night. They promised to update her if anything changed. As she left the hospital, though, she found she was too wound up to return to the estate. She ended up at the police station, making her way to Detective Katsumoto’s desk.

He blinked, surprised to see her, and she saw the instant the fear that the worst had happened cross his features.

“He’s alive,” she hastened to reassure him. “He made it through surgery, but…he’s having a tough go of it. Rick and TC are with him.”

Katsumoto tried to shrug off his reaction, but she saw his shoulder sag in relief.

“I wanted to see if there was any news about Mr. Shepherd?”

Katsumoto blinked again. “I thought you’d be checking on the Iona case, quite frankly.”

Juliet lifted a shoulder. “With the amount of evidence Magnum provided you, and the skill of your team, I trust you have that well in hand.”

“Well…I do,” Katsumoto replied. “And thanks to an anonymous tip received earlier today, we’re also building a case against Greg Pulawa, Meghan Iona’s father.”

Juliet glanced to the side. “Anonymous tip, you say?”

Katsumoto studied her another moment, then pointed at a file. “Here’s everything we have on the Aaron Shepherd murder. I’m going to refill my coffee.”

Juliet smirked, opening the file as he walked away, and studied the information carefully, knowing she couldn’t bring it with her. Before Katsumoto returned to his desk, she departed, heading to Shep’s Automotive. The Ferrari had been taken to impound and she was welcome to retrieve it, she’d been told, but she decided to leave it there for now.

As she stood outside the autobody shop, the yellow _police line do not cross_ tape snapping in the wind of an oncoming storm, she considered how to help Magnum accept that this murder was not his fault. She could connect the dots as easily as anyone—if he’d not sought refuge and help from the man, Iona would never have had reason to look him up.

But by that token, if she weren’t such an uptight wanker about the condition of the Ferrari, perhaps Magnum would have just made his way back to the estate rather than try to get the car fixed before she found out. By that logic, Shep’s murder was on her. And she needed to make Thomas believe that.

It would be better for him to hate her than to put further blame on himself.

She wasn’t sure his soul could handle much more guilt.

* * *

_Thomas_

For the first time in what felt like days, Thomas felt his body shift to awareness naturally and without the sharp stab of pain and heat.

He ached—a bone-deep pain that told him it was planning on hanging around for a while—but the alternating sensations of fire and ice, of suffocation and darkness, where gone. And in their place was a weariness he hadn’t felt in a long, long time.

His eyelids were weighted with reality. He’d woken before and Rick had been next to him. He’d been coherent enough to ask about Meghan, about the bad guys, to want reassurance that everyone was intact, in one piece, alive.

And while his brothers had made it out of that jungle after trekking in to find him and literally carry him out, another friend had fallen victim to Iona’s need to find and punish Thomas. Shep hadn’t deserved that. And Thomas slept heavy with the knowledge that the man’s death was on him.

This time, when he opened his eyes, Juliet Higgins sat curled up in the chair next to his bed. She was reading a paperback novel and had a sweatshirt that was clearly not her own wrapped around her slim body. When he’d woken up before, Rick had told him two days had passed since they carried him out of the jungle.

He wondered how long it had been this time.

“Higgy,” he croaked, his rough voice making her jump.

“Magnum!” she exclaimed softly, blinking owlishly at him as she uncurled her legs and sat forward. “It’s so good to see you awake.”

“Water,” he pleaded.

She grabbed a plastic cup with a straw and helped him take a small sip before pulling it away. “They said not much—your GI track can’t really take it quite yet.”

“How long?” he asked.

“You’ve been in ICU for four days,” she informed him. “Your fever broke yesterday.”

“Rick?”

Juliet smiled. “He’s taking a break, getting some sleep. He’s just downstairs, though, I can call—”

“No,” Thomas shook his head. His throat was on fire, but he didn’t want to go back to sleep yet.

Juliet tucked her book into the pocket of the too-big hoodie she wore. “Are you in pain? Do need anything?”

Thomas looked past her to the curtained window. “’s it raining?”

“Yes,” Juliet smiled at him, then stood to pull the curtain slightly away from the glass, revealing the water-slicked window and gray world outside. “It’s been storming for two days.”

She started to drop the curtain again, but he shook his head. “Want t’see.”

Juliet nodded, then drew the curtain back a bit so that he could see the outside. She sat down next to him again and he felt her sigh. It seemed to fill the room with her guilt.

“Magnum, I need to tell you…I am sorry about your friend Shep.”

He didn’t look at her, choosing to keep his eyes on the rain. The rain washed everything away. Started it fresh. He was able to soak it into his skin, feel clean again if only for a moment. No matter how cold it got, no matter how hard he shook with the chill of it, rain was freedom and peace and escape all in one.

“I know it’s because of me,” she continued. “And I am so very sorry for that.”

Thomas blinked. She was taking this away from him. This responsibility. This guilt. But she couldn’t; not when he was the one to blame. Not when people died because of him.

“They do not,” Juliet snapped, and he dragged his gaze back to her, surprised. He hadn’t realized he’d said anything out loud. “You are no more responsible for what happened to Shep than you are to…to Nuzo—”

“Don’t,” Thomas snapped, his voice like a broken guitar string. “Not him.”

Juliet swallowed, looking down, almost contrite, as though realizing she’d taken her argument a step too far. Thomas let his eyes wander back to the window and the rain.

“Thomas,” she said softly. “You can…you can _feel_ guilty. But _you_ are not guilty. Don’t misidentify that you are what you feel. Emotions are not reality.”

He didn’t look at her. Even if he had the energy to explain to her, she wouldn’t understand. He didn’t know if _he_ even understood. It was simply a feeling. One so wrapped in edges it cut him with its very existence.

“I believe I’ll go let Rick know you’re awake,” Juliet said, standing slowly as if she were afraid sudden movements would startle him.

And as much as he hated that, he needed it. Because right now it felt like he was sitting in a box filled with glass shards and the lid was closing. If she left, he’d be alone. And he could feel the air pressing close around him.

“Don’t,” he said again, but this time he looked at her. “Please?”

Juliet regarded him solemnly and he willed her to understand just by his looking at her. For a moment, he poured every doubt, every fear, every need he’d carried with him from the Taliban caves into his expression and simply _willed_ her to understand he could not be alone right now.

He didn’t think he’d survive it.

“I’m going to stand in the doorway,” she told him carefully. “You will see me the whole time.”

He nodded shakily, keeping his eyes on her hands, her shoulders, anything that meant there was another human in the room with him. He needed that reassurance to remind himself of where he was. _When_ he was. He watched as she held onto the door, keeping the curtain pushed back so that he could see her profile, and called out to the nurse standing at the station.

After a moment she nodded, then ducked back into the room, pull the curtain behind her.

“They are going to let Rick know you’re awake,” she told him. “He should be here soon.”

“TC?” Thomas asked, feeling his throat close. He struggled for a moment before she helped him take another quick drink.

“He’s home getting some rest,” she told him. “They both wanted to be here the whole time, but after a bit…they started to take shifts.”

It reminded him of the weeks after they escaped the Taliban. When they were apparently in Germany, though he wasn’t aware of that for some time. As weak and beat up as they had been, someone had always been by his bedside. Grounding him. Reminding him. Keeping him close to them.

“Magnum,” Juliet tried again. “It’s important that you know…Meghan and her boys are safe because of you.”

He slid his eyes away from her, focusing on the rain. Pain meds gave him an easy excuse for detachment. They were the good ones, he could tell. The bone-deep ache would be so much worse without them. But they also gave him a retreat from dealing with the reality of her words.

He couldn’t seem to find peace in the safety of his client and her sons. Shep had been killed. Nuzo was still dead. And Rick and TC carried wounds on them that would never heal.

“Magnum?”

He didn’t reply to her, simply stared at the rain. He could deal with the rain. He couldn’t deal with absolution. Not now. Not…yet.

“I’ll just sit here then,” she sighed, sinking into the chair and drawing out her book, “while we wait for Rick.”

It took Rick less than fifteen minutes to be found, woken, and come up to ICU.

“Hey, buddy,” he greeted, entering the room.

Thomas felt his whole being relax at the sight of him. Rick knew. He understood. He wouldn’t ask Thomas to accept truths that wouldn’t matter in the long run. Part of him registered Juliet’s reaction to his relief at seeing Rick, but he couldn’t find the energy to care—and he wasn’t really able to talk in any case.

Juliet smiled at both, then touched Rick on the arm as she left, leaving the chair vacant for Rick. Thomas tracked his friend with his eyes, keeping his gaze pinned on the familiar roll of Rick’s shoulders, the way his hands were held carefully at his sides in case he needed to grab something or steady something at a moment’s notice. He watched Rick sink into the chair with a loud sigh, his whole body seeming to descend into the curve of the faux leather.

“So, how are you feeling?”

Thomas swallowed hard, glancing at the cup of water.

“You know you’re not supposed to have much right now,” Rick said. “Just enough to wet your mouth, okay? Don’t think you want to be getting sick when you still have a hole in your belly.”

Thomas shook his head but eyed the water in any case.

“Okay,” Rick sighed, grabbing the cup, then helping Thomas sip some of the water. “Okay, that’s enough bud. You’ve been down this road before.”

“Pictures?” Thomas asked as he leaned back.

“Yeah, we got the pictures to Katsumoto,” Rick replied, sounding as if he’d answered this question before. Thomas wondered how many times he’d repeated himself over the last week. “Right now, all you gotta do is worry about healing up so you can get outta here, okay?”

“Fuckin’ hurts, man,” Thomas grumbled, closing his eyes.

“Yeah, well, getting shot will do that to you,” Rick replied.

They sat still for a moment, Thomas’ eyes straying to the window behind Rick, the rain a soothing reminder of a world beyond all of this pain. All of this uncertainty.

“How bad?” he suddenly heard himself asking.

Rick looked down at the palm of his hand, his eyes masked—and that made Thomas nervous. He always knew what to think when he could see Rick’s eyes. He always knew where he stood.

But now….

“Where’s Nuzo, Tommy?” Rick asked suddenly.

Thomas went cold. He blinked, feeling his body shudder in response to that question.

“What?”

Rick looked up at him and Thomas saw something sharp and cold in his friend’s gaze.

“Is Nuzo alive?”

The question hit the air like an audible strike, shattering against him and filtering around the room like dust from an old battle.

“What…?”

“I need you to answer me right now,” Rick said, his eyes level, his voice low.

And as though it was happening all over again, Thomas felt that panic and the pain that was seeing the abandoned ambulance, stolen by the same people who’d ripped Nuzo from his home and family. He felt his heart pound as it had when he approached the door—the monitors picking up his anxiety and projecting it around the room. He caught his breath, unable to keep it steady, feeling his lungs press painfully against broken ribs.

He saw Nuzo sitting slumped in the back of the ambulance, blue eyes staring sightlessly back at him, blood smeared over his face and hands. He saw those same eyes grounding him, steadying him, challenging him over a year and half trapped in Hell. He saw those hands holding him up, saving him, carrying him from the cave and torture.

Tears filled Thomas’ eyes and he blinked, sending them careening down his bruised cheeks. He couldn’t quite catch his breath because he knew. He _knew_ , but he didn’t want to say. Because if he said, it was all real.

Everything he saw was real.

“Tommy?” Rick’s voice broke, and he leaned forward, his hand going to the back of Thomas’ neck in a solid grip that spoke of brotherhood.

Rick’s fingers dug into the sore muscles along his neck and Thomas broke.

He heard it build up at the back of his throat and shatter as it hit the air, the sound drawing Rick closer in shared misery. The other man hitched a hip on the bed, mindful of the wires leading to and from Thomas’ body and pulled Thomas close to him, burying his face in his shoulder. Thomas clutched at him, gripping his shoulders, his back, holding on for dear life as he wept.

“No,” Thomas choked out through his tears. “No.”

No, he wasn’t alive. No, he wasn’t with them. No, he hadn’t saved him.

“It’s not your fault, man,” Rick whispered, arms wrapped around Thomas, bracing him, holding him. As he’d done so many times before. As Thomas so desperately needed him to do now. “It’s not your fault, Tommy.”

“He’s gone, Rick,” Thomas gasped. “I can’t…I _can’t_ ….”

He couldn’t keep going, living like everything was going to be okay because it _wasn’t_ okay. It never _would be_ okay. He lost his balance and he was never getting it back.

“Yes, you can,” Rick told him, holding him tighter until Thomas found he was desperate for a breath. “You can. You just put it back in that box and you close that lid and you put it up on a special shelf saved for times when it’s right to remember. You keep him locked up inside of you, away from the world.”

Thomas felt Rick’s hand slide up from his neck to the back of his head, his fingers pressing deep into his scalp as though to brand his words there.

“You put it back in a box and you close that fucking lid, man.”

Thomas nodded weakly against Rick’s shoulder.

“You close the lid, Tommy,” Rick repeated. “You can do that.”

“I can,” Thomas said, his breath hitching.

“You can,” Rick encouraged.

After a minute, Thomas sagged a bit in Rick’s arms, lacking the strength to hold himself up any longer. Rick helped him ease back against the pillows, then gripped his hand. Neither spoke. It was as though all their words had been used up.

“Get some rest, Thomas,” Rick said, carefully releasing his hand.

Thomas felt panic well up in his throat. “Don’t leave.”

“Not going anywhere, man,” Rick smiled at him. “You’re my priority right now.”

Thomas smiled wearily at him. He was exhausted. This was the longest he’d been awake for days. With Rick’s hand on his arm he let himself slip from awareness to sleep, eyes on the darkening skies through the window.

He didn’t mean to let himself fall back to the hole, but it was waiting for him. He could feel the momentary surprise of relief as he was hauled—a bag over his head—from the cave’s interrogation room to the outside, the burst of fresh air, chilled or otherwise, just before he was dropped unceremoniously into the hole, barely avoiding breaking his ankles as he landed.

It was so dark in there. And there were so many monsters in the dark. Monsters of people he’d killed in battle, of people he’d not saved, of his father, his family, his friends. They came at him as he slept, while he was awake. They spoke to him with the scurry of the rats and the heat of the sun. They called to him and cursed him and taunted him and he felt their screams in his heart.

He woke with a start, jackknifing forward in the bed, unable to catch his breath. The room was dark around him and he couldn’t seem to clear his blurred vision to reorient himself to where he was—the hole? The cave? His room?

He pulled his legs up, trying to tuck them close to his body, make himself as small as possible so the space around him grew larger, his breath hammering from his dry lips like a freight train. Where _the hell_ was he?

“Easy, Magnum,” came a voice from the dark.

He jerked violently as a hand landed on his arm, a machine screaming near him.

“Where—” he tried to ask, but his throat closed, his instinct shutting down any sound he’d make before a hit could come at him out of the dark.

He lifted a hand as though to ward off a blow and he felt the air around him change, softer lights coming on to illuminate a hospital room and a confused Asian man standing at the foot of his bed. A woman in hospital scrubs stood next to him, adjusting something on a machine.

“You’re safe, Mr. Magnum,” she said. “Your friend will be back soon; I need you to try to straighten your legs, can you do that?”

He could, but he wasn’t sure he wanted to. The smaller his space the safer he was. Although this position was making his side weep in protest.

“Magnum,” the man at the foot of his bed said, “you’re going to open up your stitches, and you really don’t want to do that.”

Katsumoto, that was his name. Police detective. Not exactly a fan, but he was wearing him down. Thomas straightened out his legs slowly, feeling his body release a breath of gratitude at the change in position.

“Where’s Rick?” Thomas rasped as the nurse handed him some ice chips.

“He’ll be right back,” she said. “You were sleeping so well, we thought it would be safe for him to leave for a moment.”

Thomas blushed, rubbing at his face where the oxygen cannula rubbed at his bruises. He wasn’t making life very easy on his friends right now. He looked over at Katsumoto and wondered what he thought about all of this.

“Hey,” he greeted the detective. “What are you doing here?” He took the ice chips from the nurse, trying to steady his own hand without the aid of her support.

Katsumoto came cautiously closer to the bed, nodding at the nurse as she moved back through the opened curtain toward the station just outside his door.

“Came to let you know that you’re not being charged for killing Iona’s man,” Katsumoto began.

Thomas gaped at him. “Wait…what?”

Katsumoto closed his eyes briefly, then lifted his chin and squared his shoulders as though centering himself before continuing. “Just before we found you, one of Iona’s guys got to you first. You…survived. He didn’t.”

Thomas reached up instinctively and touched the bandaged burn on his chest, staring at the white blanket around his legs. No one had said a word to him. Of course, it wasn’t until recently that he’d really been coherent enough to understand anything they’d said anyway…. But somehow, he still knew. It felt like remembering a stranger’s dream.

“Also, we were able to charge Iona with your friend’s murder—on top of about four other counts of drug, weapons, and human trafficking.”

Thomas blinked, impressed. His eyebrows bounced up. “That’s some nifty police work.”

“We uh…,” Katsumoto looked down at the floor, then back up, regarding him solemnly. “We couldn’t have done it without you.”

Thomas let the cup of ice chips rest in his lap. “Wow. That must have been hard to say.”

“You have no idea,” Katsumoto smiled at him. “Meghan Iona is safe, too. We’ve moved her and her boys to WITSEC. She wanted me to give you this,” he shifted his hip so that he was leaning against Thomas’ bed. He handed Thomas an envelope, saying, “She never meant for you to get hurt; she had no idea what her husband was doing. She was just trying to escape.”

Thomas nodded. “She’s a good woman,” he said, taking the envelope. Hefting it, he could tell it was the rest of his payment, in cash. “She just needed a second chance—away from the people who made her afraid all the time. I’m just glad she’s safe.”

He frowned down at the envelope. “Can you do me a favor?”

“Depends,” Katsumoto replied, peering at him warily.

Thomas handed the envelope back to him. “Shep has a son. He’s in his twenties, lives on Oahu. Can you give this to him? He’ll need it for funeral costs.”

Katsumoto stared at him a long moment. “It’s possible I may have misjudged you, Magnum.”

“I won’t hold it against you,” Magnum replied, feeling himself relax once more when Rick and TC entered the room. “Hey,” he greeted.

“Hey, bud,” Rick replied. “Thought you were going to sleep more.”

Thomas started to reply with a quip about Katsumoto waking him up, when he suddenly found himself confessing, “Bad dreams.”

Rick nodded, dropping a hand on his leg. “I hear you.”

“I’ll head out,” Katsumoto said, standing up and nodding at Rick and TC. “Just wanted to let Magnum know Devlin Iona was going away for a long time.”

“And here I thought you were going to make him thank you for saving his life,” Rick teased.

Thomas saw Katsumoto give the blond man a narrow-eyed glare.

“Wright,” Katsumoto warned.

“Know why your ribs are so sore, Tommy?” Rick asked.

“Because Devlin’s goons beat the hell outta me?” Thomas replied.

Rick tilted his head. “Yeah, okay, that… _and_ ….”

Katsumoto shook his head, looking once at Thomas. “I’m glad you’re going to be okay. Heal up,” he said, departing quickly before Rick was able to finish his sentence.

“That, and…?” Thomas prompted when Katsumoto was out of the room.

“He gave you CPR until the ambulance showed up,” TC told him, nodding at Thomas’ incredulous expression. “You were in rough shape, man. We got you back to the house, but your heart stopped, and Katsumoto climbed up on the table and kept you going until the paramedics got to you.”

Thomas sat with that a minute. “Katsumoto… _saved_ me?”

Rick nodded, clapping a hand gently on Thomas’ leg. “Maybe he’s not such a bad guy, huh?”

Thomas nodded slowly, rubbing his tender sternum. Between Juliet apologizing for Shep, and Katsumoto saving his life, he was starting to wonder if he’d made the right assumptions about the people in his life. Rick planted himself on the chair next to Thomas’ bed while TC perched on the window seat. He started to pull the curtain closed, covering the window when Thomas made a small noise.

TC paused, attuned as always. “No?”

Thomas licked his lips, trying to think of the right way to explain. “I like being able to see outside.”

He sensed Rick go still next to him, but TC just nodded. “I get that, brother,” he said, keeping the curtain opened.

They settled into what had apparently become routine for them—Rick reading out of one of Robin’s books as TC added color commentary—and Thomas found himself drifting. The minute he felt the pull of sleep, however, he startled himself awake, worried that he’d end up back in that hole.

The third time it happened, Rick paused in what he was reading and leveled his bright blue eyes on Thomas.

“Don’t worry, Thomas,” he said softly. “We’re not going anywhere; you can rest.”

“Kind of afraid to,” Thomas confessed.

“Bad dreams,” Rick repeated.

“Yeah,” Thomas dropped his head back, trying not to focus on the many, _many_ places his body hurt.

TC chuckled. “You remember how Nuzo got us past those?”

Thomas blinked, glancing over at where the big man filled the window seat. “Wasn’t it…a cartoon?”

“Scooby-Doo,” Rick grinned. “The man knew every single episode.”

“And he would tell it to us, frame by frame, too,” TC chuckled again. “Every sway of Daphne’s cartoon hips.”

Thomas let his eyes drift shut as he smiled, then forced them open once more.

“How about I see if Scooby’s on TV?” Rick offered, and Thomas felt his eyes resting on him.

“I’m sorry, guys,” Thomas said softly. “This is…ridiculous.”

“There is nothing ridiculous about finding clues and solving mysteries, my friend,” Rick protested, collecting the TV remove from where it was tucked into the side of the bed. “I mean, it’s basically what you do for a living.”

“I meant this…whole not being able to be alone thing,” Thomas confessed. “I don’t know why…it’s just…stupid.”

“Hey,” TC spoke up, turning so that he faced his two friends. “There is nothing stupid about needing people, Thomas. _You’re_ there for _us_ , man.”

Thomas huffed, thinking of something Juliet had said to him before all of this started. “Yeah…to ask favors.”

Rick narrowed his eyes, mirroring TC’s posture. “You don’t think we know why you do that?”

Thomas looked over at him, confused.

“You don’t ask us for favors because _you_ need them,” Rick said, leaning back in the chair and resting one ankle across the opposite knee. “You do it because _we_ need them. We need to be needed, relevant, connected. We need to have something to unify us and keep us focused on a singular effort. Turns out…that’s helping you.”

Thomas glanced down, his face heating up, chagrined. He hadn’t meant it to be obvious.

“In the Teams,” he said softly, “there’s always this moment. Like a line in the road. And something inside of you knows that if you step over that line, there’s no going back. Whoever you were before…they’re gone. Replaced by the person on the other side of that line.”

He felt Rick and TC go quiet. He knew they knew—it wasn’t the same in the Marines, but it was close enough. They had their own shit, their own stories. But they knew this one was his, and this one was why.

“Sometimes the other side of that line is surrender, sometimes it’s resilience. Sometimes it’s darkness and sometimes it’s light. But it’s always a choice.”

He rubbed at the back of his neck, a mannerism he’d picked up in the caves to stave off anxiety. He knew Rick recognized it—there wasn’t much that man didn’t see. He felt his friend shift—the movement so subtle he had to be looking for it to notice—and lean an arm against Thomas’ leg. Just a small pressure, but enough to say _I’m here…you’re not alone._

“In BUD/s, Nuzo kept me on the right side of that line. Then there were some missions where he knew I would cross it and he just had to…let me. Robin was usually the reason then,” he glanced over at the other two and saw them nod in unison. “But in the caves…it was like I could see that line. Like it…swam in front of me. It would be painted on your faces, cutting through the center between those damn cages. It was in that interrogation room, every time their questions echoed. It was in that hole.”

He felt emotion building at the base of his throat, threatening to spill over and coat the three of them in pain and memories. But he couldn’t stop now. He needed them to know this.

“And I knew I had to keep you guys from crossing it,” he continued, his voice breaking. He looked down, unable to meet their eyes, unable to keep his tears at bay. They bounced from his lashes, skipping through the scruff of beard that had grown over his jaw over the last week. “I had to keep you from seeing who waited for you on the other side. So…I crossed it. And it changed me. And then we’re home and we’re…we’re s-safe…,” he wiped at his eyes, but didn’t let himself look at them. “And I don’t know how to stop. There’s nothing that’s going to hurt you here. But…I still see that line. And I just…I keep thinking I have to keep you on this side.”

He sniffed, clearing his throat, then looked up at his friends, surprised to see the tears on Rick’s face and to see TC holding his bridge of his nose between two fingers.

“So, you ask us for favors,” Rick said, his voice thin but steady, “to keep us focused on you instead of whatever pain we’re in. Just like you did in the Valley.”

Thomas gave them a half-grin. “Yeah, I guess so.”

“Tommy,” Rick started, then shook his head and looked down.

Thomas felt himself tense, his battered abdominal muscles clenching as he braced for whatever Rick was going to say. When his friend looked up, tears turning his blue eyes bright, Thomas caught his breath.

“Thank you,” Rick concluded.

Thomas felt his chin tremble and he smiled.

“You can rest now, Thomas,” TC said softly. “We’ll be here when you wake up.”

Thomas let himself relax back against the pillows, drying the tears from his face, and listened as Rick started reading once more, the steady cadence of his voice carrying the dry amusement of Robin’s interpretation of their exploits.

Thomas felt himself fading once more, but this time allowed it, knowing that if he did slip over that edge into the hole in the darkness of his dreams, he had someone to pull him back.


	6. Chapter 6

Carry me home, there’s no sorrow down in the ground  
Carry me home, don’t you weep for me I am freedom bound  
Lay down my bones, there is peace within the light I’ve found  
Release my soul, carry me home  
\- _Carry Me Home_ , The Sweeplings

**

_Epilogue, Rick_

It took another week for Thomas to be strong enough to be released from the hospital, and even then, Dr. Yeats didn’t want him to be alone for a while. Juliet had offered to let him move into the main house where she could keep an eye on him, but Rick saw the panicked look in Thomas’ eye at the thought of his recuperation being at the mercy of a former MI6 agent.

So, Rick volunteered to sleep on the couch for a bit, making sure Thomas didn’t do further damage and truly healed up before he took on any more cases that landed him in the jungle for an extended period. He tried to hide how hard it was to see Thomas so weak; as though it was expected, Thomas tried to turn away the wheelchair, but there was no way the man could have walked the length of the hospital to the car.

He fell asleep on the way to Robin’s estate, and then slept again once they got him settled, but Rick supposed that was good. So far, his babysitting job was a breeze.

But then he woke up the next day to find the house empty.

At some point during his hospital stay, Juliet had apparently invaded Thomas’ room and cleaned up. When they’d returned there, the mess of clothes that had been strewn all about the floor were collected, cleaned, and stacked neatly on top of his military footlocker, next to his bed.

When Rick entered the room around ten the morning after arriving back to the estate, he had a clear view of the bed. Finding it empty had his blood pressure spiking. He immediately looked to the darkened corner of the room where he’d found Thomas before when the nightmares grabbed him, but saw it was empty as well.

“Where the hell are you?” Rick grumbled as he tore through the small guest house, trying to figure out where a weak, wounded man would have wandered off to without him so much as stirring.

“Have you checked the beach?” came a voice from the lanai.

Rick flinched, startled, and whirled around to see Juliet leaning against the opened doorway, arms crossed over her midsection, a curious tilt to her blonde head.

“The beach?” Rick moved out to the lanai and looked toward the water. Sure enough, there stood Thomas, cargo shorts, Hawaiian shirt, Dodgers baseball cap and all, looking for all the world as though he was sizing up the next wave instead of recovering from nearly dying. “What the _hell_ is he doing out there?”

“I see him out there quite often, actually,” Juliet revealed. “I always thought he was…goofing off. Figuring out the next thing he could borrow from Mr. Masters. The kayak, surfboard, who knows what else.”

“Well, he’s damn sure not going surfing—”

“But now,” Juliet continued, pushing away from the doorway. “I think it’s because there’s nothing bigger than the ocean. You could look for days and not see all of it. There are no walls, no cave ceilings, no bars. It’s truly as open as one can get.”

Rick felt himself freeze as he listened to her, watching Thomas as the ocean breeze pressed against him. She was right. The one thing Thomas had done both in the hospital in Germany and just this past week was ask them to pull the curtain from the window so he could see outside. And on the way home, he rested his head against the opened window to feel the wind in his face.

_I probably should have anticipated this._

“Hey, call TC, will you?” Rick asked her as he moved across the lanai to the lawn. “Tell him our boy needs us.”

“Already did,” she replied, and smiled at him when he turned around to face her, surprised. “And Kumu sent this,” she picked up a vine covered in small, fragrant flowers.

“A maile lei?” Rick asked, taking it from her.

“She said that it was to help you all find peace,” she tucked her hands into her jeans pockets and turned away with a small smile as Rick saw TC’s Island Hoppers van pull up.

“Hey, Jules,” Rick called, waiting until she paused. “Thank you.”

She smiled again, tipping her chin down in a nod. “I believe I have quite a way to go before I learn who Robin invited to stay under his roof,” she said, eyes drifting past Rick toward the beach. “But something tells me it’s a worthy journey.”

She nodded to TC as they passed each other on the path and Rick showed TC the lei.

“For Nuzo?” TC guessed.

“She said Kumu sent it to help us find peace,” Rick explained.

TC nodded. They made their way down to the beach, being careful to make enough noise with their approach that they didn’t startle Thomas.

“You’re not thinking of going for a swim, are you?” Rick asked as they reached him, standing on either side of the smaller man. “Kind of think the good Dr. Yeats would have a thing or two to say about that.”

Thomas gave them a smile—not quite his usual little-boy grin, but it was starting to get there.

“Naw, nothing like that,” he said, reaching up and adjusting his hat by tugging on the bill. “Just…felt a bit closed in is all.”

“It’s good to have you back, T.M.,” TC said, resting a hand on Thomas’ shoulder. “I’m not a fan of hospitals.”

“Me either, TC,” Thomas agreed. He glanced over at Rick. “What’s that you got there?”

“A maile lei,” Rick told him. “It’s a Hawaiian tradition when you lose someone to paddle out into the surf and put a lei in the ocean.”

They were quiet a moment. Rick felt Thomas’ shoulder brush his as the wind from the ocean pushed against him once more.

“You think it still works if you don’t paddle out?” Thomas asked.

“I think it works however we need it to,” Rick said, glancing askance at his friend.

The bruises had faded to nothing more than a yellowish green, but there were scars on Thomas’ face—above his eyebrow and along his occipital bone—that hadn’t been there before. And he knew there were more on his stomach and chest. Adding to a collection that told a story.

Witness marks to a life of pain…and a life of survival.

“You think he’d have wanted this?” Thomas said quietly.

“He’d have wanted anything that kept us together and eased our pain,” TC said with certainty. “He’d have wanted us to watch out for each other. And he’d have wanted to be commemorated in one of Robin’s books as a big damn hero.”

Thomas and Rick chuckled at that.

“Yeah,” Thomas laughed, pressing a hand almost instinctively against the still-healing wound on his side. “Yeah, that he would. We’ll have to make that point to Robin.”

“He already knows, man,” TC grinned. “You know that guy—he started planning it the minute he walked away from the funeral.”

“Yeah, you’re probably right,” Thomas agreed.

They stood quietly together, watching the waves, filling their eyes with the sky.

Rick handed him the lei. “You do it, Tommy,” he said. “It should be you.”

Thomas took the lei, letting the delicate flowers slide through his fingers. “I miss you, Nuzo,” he said softly. “I’m gonna miss you every day for the rest of my life.”

“Thank you, man,” Rick said, matching Thomas’ tone. “Thanks for saving our lives, and for keeping us together.”

“You were our rock,” TC said. “And you kept us solid.”

With that, Thomas stepped forward, and with one hand bracing his wounded side, he tossed the lei out into the ocean. He moved back to stand shoulder to shoulder with his friends, watching as the current captured the flowers and pulled it further and further away.

After a beat, he reached up and adjusted his hat once more, then dragged his hand down his face.

“You good, Tommy?” Rick asked, feeling hyper-vigilant about his friend’s every motion.

“Yeah,” Thomas replied, his voice subdued. “Just…closing some boxes.”

Rick nodded, and felt the younger man lean closer. There were a lot of boxes to close, and some lids were heavier than others. He slung an arm around Thomas’ shoulders as though in camaraderie but allowed Thomas to transfer his weight a bit more.

They stayed for several more minutes until Rick felt Thomas shiver.

“Who’s hungry?” Rick said, gently turning Thomas away from the ocean and guiding him toward the guest house.

“I could eat,” TC commented, his long strides bringing him into the lead.

Thomas didn’t reply, but Rick felt him match his stride.

Some things Rick just knew.

And this time, what he knew was that it wouldn’t be today, and it wouldn’t be tomorrow, but Thomas _would be_ back to his old self. One day he’d just give them that Cheshire cat grin and call them up for a favor to help him handle a client, and they’d be there to answer his call. Hand him a beer. Bail him out of jail. Give him a ride.

They’d be there to keep him on this side of that line he still saw. Keep him from having to make a choice he couldn’t come back from. Because Rick didn’t want to live in a world where there was no coming back for Thomas Magnum.

That much he knew.

End.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks so much for reading. I truly appreciate the gift of your time. This was a fun ride, spending time with these characters. 
> 
> One thing I’ve learned about myself in the last year of changes and losses is that I’m a storyteller. Whether it’s playing in someone else’s sandbox, or building my own, I love taking characters through a plot and watching them come out on the other side—a little different, a little changed, perhaps, from spending time with me. 
> 
> I suppose I’ll have to see where this epiphany takes me next.


End file.
